Celtic pride

Deirdre Grunwald's Celtic abstractions

by Leon Nigrosh

MEMORY, DREAMS,
AND CELTIC SPIRIT
paintings by Deirdre MCCullough Grunwald, at the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell, through January 7, 2001.

Unlike many people who have jumped on the Celtic bandwagon in recent years, mainly to dabble in its mystical, pagan religious aspects, Deirdre McCullough Grunwald has been seri- ously studying Celtic art since she first encountered it in 1980. As a fifth-generation Irish-American, she had always been interested in her roots; as an artist, she was fascinated by the ancient iconography of knots, spirals, and intricate patterns that permeated all of Celtic art.

The current exhibition at the Brush Art Gallery in Lowell has forty-five of Grunwald's paintings, drawings, and collages that highlight her many talents, spanning two decades of active experimentation with the integration of ornamental pattern, still life, and abstract expressionism. Some of her most obvious connections with Celtic interlaced patterning can be seen in a series of seven small, mandala-like watercolor and ink drawings. Rendered with great precision, these richly colored circles of entrelac, Solomon's knots, and zoomorphic entities have an almost hypnotic effect. As you look at God's Eye with Spirals or Swimming Birds, the intricate designs begin to appear as though they are slowly revolving.

Many of Grunwald's works are on a grander, and much more abstract, scale. Her five-foot tall collaged and painted Fourth of July explodes with giant spirals that burst over abundant knotted patterns, barely perceptible human faces and other fleeting forms - all rendered in a riotous color scheme. Her equally large Journey to Kandinsky's Chair, completed in 1989, is just as bright and colorful, and laden with torn collaged elements. However, it relies more heavily on the broad swaths of gestural paint to hold our interest, as did the works of Fauvist painter Wassily Kandinsky himself. In fact, Kandinsky often spoke about his aim to charge color and form with purely spiritual meanings of their own - a dictum certainly not lost on Grunwald. She feels that there is an inherent spirituality built into geometric forms, a balance, and a timelessness as well. Her 1991 composition Storm (Dragon) is a continuation into the realm of color and form for their own sake, with swirls and slashes of brilliant color competing for our attention. It is an amalgam of tiny details both abstract and representational which is meant to be viewed close up as well as from afar. Through her extensive studies, Grunwald has found that the very same patterns and designs that were originally thought to be Celtic in origin have appeared independently in Aztec, Mayan, and Hopi cultures. Historically, it turns out that the early Germanic Celts actually borrowed some of their design elements from the ancient Etruscans. And although many of Grunwald's paintings may exude an Art Nouveau/Art Deco aura, those forms freely borrowed from Celtic art for its "decorative qualities of nature and the symbolic energy of its organic forms." The immutable laws of construction have crossed over from culture to culture, and have traveled full circle.

Through all of her years of abstractionism, Grunwald has never forsaken the art of representational still-lifes. A group of seven small watercolors and oils on paper produced off and on within the last three years shows just how adept she is at rendering onions - and red ones at that. The splashes of color with white ink highlights make these liliaceous succulents appear so real that we can almost smell their aroma. Grunwald has also never hesitated to experiment with materials. Several of her works like her large, square, Etruscia IV, incorporate such diverse materials as gold leaf, copper leaf, and crushed egg shells to create a resonant textural surface - as well as imbuing the image with ephemeral connotations of majesty, birth cycles, and the idea of the infinite. Her more recent Mandala Sky incorporates many of these same elements, but in a totally abstract geometric configuration. In one of her latest paintings, Fossil Fish Dream I, layers of transparent color filled with nebulous Celtic spirals and highlighted with tiny bits of eggshell eventually combine to produce a barely discernible aquarian form.

To see 20 years of Grunwald's work all in one place at one time is truly striking. When Grunwald first saw the completed installation, she claimed to be awestruck. When asked how she learned to do such elegant work, she replied, "I had to learn the craft, then follow the paint, and stay out of the way."

The Brush Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Call (978) 459-7819.