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Bright lights

Colorful insight into Nan Hass Feldman's world

by Leon Nigrosh

NAN HASS FELDMAN: STILL AND NOT SO STILL LIFE AND LANDSCAPE At the University of Massachusetts Medical Center Gallery, 55 Lake Avenue North, through November 16.

Nan Hass Feldman is a "museum junkie." She visits art museums everywhere and as often as possible. As a child growing up in New York, she went to the Museum of Modern Art and was particularly enchanted by Jean Dubuffet's The Cow with the Subtle Nose, which she continued to visit as a teenager. Years later as one of the finishing touches for her MFA degree, Feldman wrote a 32-page treatise about that particular canvas. In her current exhibition at the UMass Medical Center Gallery, you can see Homage IV to Dubuffet -- Our Cows.

But all is not cows in Feldman's repertoire. In fact, there are few animals at all, and only in her most recent work. The majority of the 81 works on exhibit contain images of boats, houses, trees, or chairs. Feldman says that for her these objects have an Expressionist tilt, shifting from actual subjects to become symbols of the human experience. "Originally, the house was a place where things happened. Now, it's become very human. Sometimes the house is bold, strong, and confident. Other times, it's really frightened and vulnerable. It's me.''

Feldman's boats take on a human quality too. In Coming Home Into Harbor, two boats seek the safety of calmer waters as they head toward a secure boathouse. This could represent her feelings for her two children, as she offers them safe haven from an indifferent world. By extension, Feldman offers her viewers similar opportunities. With doors wide open, the brightly painted The Boat House invites us to seek shelter from the turbulent waters in the foreground.

There is an overwhelming presence to many of Feldman's paintings. A riot of color slices across each canvas but, like Matisse (one of her favorite artists), Feldman never allows the hues to commingle. Each color maintains its own identity while still creating flowing rhythms and a well-defined structure within each composition. In many cases, the work is less about the image and more about the paint itself. The liquid colors seem to have a life of their own, sliding over the canvas, bumping into each other, merging and overlapping, yet never mixing. Virtually every stroke is placed just so -- to the extent that paintings like Sky Dreams or Bend in the River could be viewed upside down and still retain their compositional integrity.

With her insatiable thirst for art history still unquenched, Feldman has begun to create a new series of experiments in encaustic painting. This obscure technique dates back to ancient Greece when artists painted with tinted melted wax in order to preserve their work from the constant humidity and bright sunlight. The process is painstaking, expensive, and quite chancy. She first melts colored wax at 200 degrees and then, because it solidifies instantaneously, must quickly apply it to her canvas. In order to fuse each application, she uses a heat gun to bring the wax just the point of melting -- hold it in place too long or let it get too hot and the entire picture dribbles away.

The result is almost like taking a step back in time to the 19th century with its mannered look. Many of the works draw their inspiration from several trips to France. Feldman's interest in Fauvist painter André Derain and the work of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot becomes evident. Her small works are vignettes of serene countrysides, replete with romantic sunsets and tiled rooftops.

Several of her other encaustic works take us way back in time -- to the cave paintings at Lascaux in Dordogne, France. Two years ago, Feldman received a Kinnicut award from the Worcester Art Museum and chose to spend part of her time exploring those famous prehistoric caves filled with magical renderings of animals and the hunt. Using the textures inherent in encaustic painting to good advantage, Feldman offers us several updated versions of those antlered animals in Cave Parade and Back to the Cave.

The overall impression you will come away with is that Feldman is a prolific artist, yet she manages not to repeat herself. She brings a fresh approach to each work and, above all, exudes enthusiasm -- some of which will no doubt rub off on you.

The UMass Gallery is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call 856-2000.