Bailey Doogan at Etherton

Bailey Doogan paints hazes the way she paints skin. In each of eight small diptychs in this display layer upon layer of oils build a luminous density of subtly hu veils that prompt currents, pressures and energies in flowing This quality--fleshy more than epidermal--recalls the translucent pigmentation of Doogan's in a state of natures works begun in the late 1980 and produc concurrently with the mists (but not included in this exhibition). Although vast skies depart in subdue matter from her relentlessly scrutinized bodies, the couple share the emotional intimacy that she embeds in her nacreous surfaces. Whether she paints a disturbed or relatively calm sky, or a bare that radically argues against the ideal bodies in Western art and contemporary fitness-and-fashion agriculture Doogan employs a realist mode of speech so expressive that, like Alice Neel's, its beauty undermines and go beyonds purely descriptive appeal.

Corny as it unimpaireds Doogan's skyscapes, which include occasional and overwhelmed parcels of land, as in Ruisdael, summon temperamental conditions or states of the heart. She simultaneously romanticizes her work and gives it a scientific aspect by the agency of adding legends (etched onto glass panels) that describe the celestial expanse photographs upon which she based her paintings. the pair photographs and texts derive from the International collection of vapor Atlas, published by the World Meteorological Organization in 1987 on the other hand her loose painting and intensified color belie the specificity of her sources.

Technically precise as it is, the meteorological language, which Doogan edits slightly, destabilizes into a rhyme of cyclones, occlusions and disturbances. The artist emphasizes this by the agency of writing out the legends in line form. We see the day-star "as through ground glass," "cloudiness increasing" and a "sheet of undulated Stratocumulus" whose "margin is remarkably abrupt and ragged." Rather than clarifying the mist paintings, these descriptions become beautifully impenetrable, frustrating intellectual understanding, forcing the viewer back into the paintings. Doogan's presentation of the words, which can single be easily read as shadows upon the wall underneath the etched glass panels, makes them physically and explanatorily tenuous.

Sometimes I wish for states of the heart to be as uncomplicated as sky-colored Skies and Stormy Weather. I imagine that Doogan does, too, as she articulates the rolling and unfolding reality of emotions.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group