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Imagine all the places

Annie Sullivan's new view on old fields

by Leon Nigrosh

HOME FIELD: LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS BY ANNIE SULLIVAN at the ARTSWorcester Gallery at Quinsigamond Community College, Administration Building, 670 West Boylston Street, through August 29.

Mention the words "baseball game" and everyone immediately imagines the crack of a bat, roaring crowds, and colorful action on the field. Everyone, that is, except Annie Sullivan. Her ballfield paintings are strangely devoid of the thrill of the game. It is as if all the fans and players were mysteriously whisked away mid-game. The field in Rutland Ballfield II is neatly tended, advertisements dot the outfield wall, home plate has been carefully dusted, but everything is still. Sullivan imparts a dreamlike quality to this scene and, at the same time, creates an air of expectancy -- something is just about to happen.

This same feeling is entwined throughout 27 of Sullivan's paintings on display at Quinsigamond Community College. Signs of humanity in the form of tire tracks appear in Landfill, but there are no workers in sight. Fading yellow lines and the occasional oil stain mark the all-too-empty spaces in Parking Lot. Even the Piper Cub in the middle of her tiny Airport seems to be eagerly awaiting takeoff. Sullivan enhances this feeling of reverie and anticipation by delicately softening the edges of the subjects in her paintings. By using feathered brushstrokes, she intentionally makes each painting appear to be slightly out of focus.

Her paintings are also imbued with an air of immutability, as though we were witnessing a specific moment frozen in time. But we are left to wonder just what moment? The skies are mostly bereft of the traditional time indicators -- shaded clouds or the particular placement of the sun. The lack of shadows in virtually every picture further prevents us from knowing the time of day being depicted. One notable exception to this phenomenon is Cashman Park, Newburyport where the long, low shadow cast by a light pole becomes the center of attention. Otherwise, each picture is in a state of suspended animation, including the waters of her Plum Island River series.

Although many of Sullivan's paintings contain evidence of the interaction between man and nature, several of her landscapes show surroundings as yet untrammeled by humans. She approaches her work in a manner very similar to Worcester's turn-of-the-century landscape painter Joseph Greenwood. A corporator of the Worcester Art Museum, he was admired chiefly for the amazing impression of depth he brought to his canvases with a minimum of artifice. Greenwood, a sometimes teacher at WAM's art school and pre-eminent plein-air artist of the time, traveled about Worcester County, making oil sketches on cigar-box lids that he would later translate onto larger canvases in his studio.

Although Sullivan uses a camera instead of a cigar box for her preliminary studies, she also uses conventional techniques to create unconventional images. Through deft placement of color, rather than employing the perspective of mechanical drawing, she draws us deep into her Hill. Intellectually, we know that it's only flat streaks of paint on canvas, but the orange and yellow fields beckon our imaginations to cross over to see what lies in the dark greens beyond. In both Storm and Little Storm, Sullivan's placement of a particularly low horizon directs our attention to the grandeur of the impending cloudbursts.

This extended series of landscape paintings is in stark contrast to Sullivan's earlier paintings of blank stuffed dolls and broken porcelain figurines. In those strongly delineated and richly shaded pictures it was as if she was trying to work out difficult social and personal situations. The body language and placement of the dolls in her well-known painting Shadow Story creates tension that is totally absent from her tranquil landscapes. Looking at her quiet and contemplative vistas, we assume that whatever brought about the veiled rage of her earlier work has been resolved and that the current body of work indicates that her present frame of mind is far more optimistic.

By concentrating her efforts on surreal portraits of familiar Worcester and North Shore locations, Sullivan takes us with her on the proverbial trip down memory lane, offering flashes of recognition from which we can conjure up our own memories, real or imagined.

The ARTSWorcester Gallery at Quinsigamond Community College is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Call 854-4281.