Art Review: Jane Schwartz Gates
Emerson’s Coffee House and Gallery, 13203 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks (through April)
by Joe Futtner
Devotees of New Age spirituality in which the highest psychic energies can meld with and transform the most commonplace aspects of the world—the natural realm of flora and fauna—will have plenty to cheer about at the most recent exhibition of mixed media paintings and colored prints by Jane Schwartz Gates, at Emerson’s Coffee House and Gallery. But then, the artist might bristle at this association. Nature themes have long figured into Jane Schwartz Gates’ visual repertoire, virtually the whole of her life. So it may be that the world has, in a sense, finally caught up with this affable and articulate artist.
Schwartz, a native of Rhode Island, has expressed herself through nature themes for as long as she can remember. The artist recalls drawing at the precocious age of three, and even harped on her parents to get her into a class. A local artist, whose work was self-consciously primitive, agreed to take her into the class, where she worked with a group of older students.
Her training continued at the college level at Providence’s prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, where she entered a painting curriculum. But this was a period marked by frustration. She remembers being a “little embarrassed” by her interest in nature, and found herself at odds with some of the dominant trends in art in the 1960s and ‘70s. According to Gates, one instructor preferred art in an impressionist manner, which created some problems for the young artist. “I remember I was always late for class. I ran in [to the cafeteria] and grabbed those boxes of cereal. I experimented, applying different resists on the surface [of the cardboard]. That’s how my work with this technique began, with those cereal boxes, being bored…”
The opportunity to study and travel in Italy allowed her to escape RISD, after which she spent several years abroad, in Europe. Meeting and eventually marrying a British musician, she left the art world for a while, moved to London, and turned her talents to music. The marriage eventually ended, and Gates ended up in the Los Angeles area. She embarked on a period of intense self-discovery, centered around participation in a communal psychotherapeutic group. Gates refers to this experience as “confrontational,” in which some 60 participants laid bare to each other their emotional lives. When the original egalitarian impetus was lost and the group became cultish, Schwartz bailed. “Some did really well, and others are still lost,” she recounts. “It really is hard to draw a line between reality and self-definition.”
Today Schwartz has reached that age when angst thankfully gives way to a comfortable sense of one’s self. For the past 15 years Gates has sought a link between psychology and that which exists beyond the physical world (the “airy scary,” as she self-mockingly refers to this condition). Subjects from the natural world—cats, owls, predatory birds, etc., but especially trees—provide her with a “rooted-ness,” which when attained opens to a transcendent realm.
Schwartz’s metamorphic quality is evident in works such as Leaf Spirit (mixed media), in which the profile of a young woman is transformed into a leaf—or vice-versa. The very possibility of transformation suggests the persistence of an inner spirit, and a communal sense that is—for want of a better word—trans-species.
Clearly Schwartz is attempting to restore the magical potential to the act of artistic representation. This is evident, for example, in the impression one receives of a presence of hidden or largely obscured images that seem to operate in the work at some intuitive level. This adds a genuine dimension of magic and delight to the work which by its nature risks lapsing into the literal.
I think Schwartz is more successful when her content is less “literal.” Fortune Teller, a kind of ouija board demonstration of Gates’ life in the “airy-scary” lane, is less successful than some others in the show. Her most successful works are in fact the most modest, in both conception and size. For example, the attractive Polar Bear, in which the artist records her impressions of the animal, and in the process reveals her strengths as a deft draftswoman and a colorist.
Cats and predatory birds, arboreal and floral forms likewise are the sources of inspiration and transformation. One of the larger works in the show, Feline Evolution, is a virtual manifesto of transformation. In its swirling rhythm, wild cats give way to the domestic variety, which transforms to human female and infant forms. The transformations occur in what seems an infinite loop, in which animality and humanity are cast not as polar opposites, but as part of a circular continuum. Indicted as a co-conspirator in this process is fire, at once substance and process, the presence of which is often suggested by Gates’ handling.
This show marks Jane Schwartz Gates’ re-entry into the world of art exhibition. For many years she was turned off to the “art market” and worked at her art for herself, ignoring trends and styles she felt inimical. Perhaps ironically, the show at Emerson’s began to sell even before it opened. “I’ve always sold the work,” Gates notes. “It’s trying to get the galleries to look at it, that’s the hard part.”
I asked Gates if she was at all concerned about who was buying her work, and what they might understand—or misunderstand—concerning her artistic intentions. On this issue the ethereal Jane Schwartz Gates is fairly pragmatic. “I feel, if it’s out there, it’s going to get interpreted,” she comments, a bit wistfully. “I’m happy, so long as it’s out there.” ♦