Plane and fancy

Hal Trafford paints a fantasy
land without a face

by Leon Nigrosh

SEE AND SEE AGAIN: THE PULL OF STRUCTURE AND THE LURE OF SPACE: PAINTINGS BY HAL TRAFFORD

at the ARTSWorcester Gallery at the Aurora, 660 Main Street, Worcester, through October 6.

You can almost hear the echoes of silence as you peer into Hal Trafford's architectural landscape paintings. Most-

ly dark, brooding, and devoid of humanity, more than a dozen of Trafford's oils currently on display in the Aurora focus on the corners and edges of our surroundings. The stillness of The Noise of Memories is increased by the deep maroon shadows that loom over empty doorways that lead to other empty rooms. The only clue that this place might have been, or might still be, inhabited is a roll of paper towels above the sink.

Although the show includes works completed over the past 20 years, the paintings share a remarkable continuity of style and palette. Trafford never strays far from his even application of mauves and lavenders, greens and blues as he delineates his (our) world of alleys, stairways, and doorways. The acute perspective Trafford employs in Alley in the Rain further heightens the emptiness created by his use of heavy hues to mark the narrow walkway. A dimly lit opening to one side of the alley suggests the possibility that there might be life within these walls. To amplify this image of dank wetness even more, Trafford has adroitly overlaid the canvas with a dripping glaze.

The starkness of most of Trafford's canvases, such as The Storefront, is remenicent of a number of works by American Regionalist painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967), particularly Hopper's 1930 Early Sunday Morning. With angles and planes of flat color -- and blank windows -- both men portray a sense of loneliness in the midst of humanly constructed and controlled space. Trafford also pays homage to the great Dutch graphic artist, M. C. Escher (1898-1972) with his large pink, pale blue, and mauve Where Ways, in which a series of staircases chase after each other in laterals and curves, all leading to nowhere in particular. Stairs and doorways play a large role in Trafford's recent Cameo of Dreams. Once again, winding stairways and open doors lead to other stairs and doors, but this time -- and for the only time -- two small faces appear within the jumble of architectural elements.

Not long ago, Trafford was selected to participate in the Dune Shack Artist in Residence program in Provincetown. During his three-week stay, he turned his brushes to the task of describing the magnificent wonders of nature that enveloped him. Through flat planes and curving line, his 52x40 canvas The Shapes of Sand portrays the rolling sand dunes of the Outer Cape. Still maintaining his soft pastel palette, Trafford creates the illusion of space using color gradations, with dark tones in the foreground fading to a pale wash of sky above, punctuated only by the occasional patch of tiny green lines to indicate crabgrass. On the opposite wall is another rendition of this scene, this time produced in watercolors, all very similar except for the addition of a tiny shack in the distance. Trafford uses the same hues and washes to delineate the vista, but the style is slightly higher key and somewhat more defined, and he introduces a burgundy shading in both sand and sky. On reflection, these two works are remarkably, if unintentionally, similar to Georgia O'Keeffe's 1930 New Mexican Landscape, with the same bald sand hills and patches of scrub, only transplanted to the East Coast. Trafford's other watercolor entries do not hold to the same standard he set for himself with his oil paintings.

Whether optimist or pessimist, you will certainly gain insight from this exhibition. Is the staircase in The Other Side reaching heavenward or the opposite direction? Does the arched double door in Blue Ways show us the way in or the way out? Do the blank windows and TV antennas in Forms of Silence suggest humanity or a ghost town? By being somewhat less than specific in his presentation and intentions, Trafford invites -- no, entreats -- us to examine not only his pictures, but our own feelings about them.

Aurora is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (508) 755-5142.