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Group therapy

Artists look at the personalities behind the portraits

by Leon Nigrosh

JAY CLIFFORD & SARAH JEPPSON At St. Luke's Gallery, Moll Art Center, Anna Maria College, Sunset Lane, Paxton, through December 18.

On rare occasions we get to see works that really grab us and hold our attention. Separately, Jay Clifford and Sarah Jeppson have the ability to do this through their paintings and drawings. Together, with more than 50 individual works on display at Anna Maria College, these two artists give us a much needed boost toward rediscovering what humanity is all about.

Gallery director Elizabeth Killoran purposely arranged the show so viewers could directly compare the artists' style and subjects. Both use portraiture in its most loosely defined manner to tell stories or to cajole their audience members into examining their emotions. Often drawing inspiration from family, friends, and their own experiences, both artists see their works as portraying the psychological aspect of a subject's personality rather than trying to create a photographic likeness. In fact, Clifford started out as a photographer with influences ranging from Richard Avedon to Diane Arbus. But he realized that he could not bring their kind of insight to his photos, so he switched to painting wherein he had complete control of his subject matter.

The two artists share a common ground in their interest in Jean-Michel Basquiat, the young artist who burst onto the scene in the early '80s by bringing graffiti art off the streets and into the galleries. Many of Clifford's stark paintings retain that punk-rock, in-your-face look. His Kevin, with wild aqua hair splashed across a fuchsia background, looks out as if to say, "What's it to ya."

Jeppson employs a good deal of graffiti-like writing in her mixed-media presentations. Progressing Nicely is laden with words that fade in and out of the largely abstract image. She admires poets for the way they produce images and evoke emotions through words. By writing on her drawings, Jeppson introduces other layers of meaning to her visual images, triggering responses from the viewer.

Both artists infuse a grand and varied palette of color into their works. Clifford tends toward flat areas of hot color, as in Prodigy, with the red-shirted character's three rods of maroon hair shooting straight up into the acid green background. Jeppson mixes and re-mixes her colors, adding them and scraping them off until she arrives at the look and feel she wants. In Just Us . . . and Mixed Up, this constant activity leaves marks that add texture to both the physical surface and the psychological meaning. While Jeppson's cigarette-smoking Muffy, with its guitar-shaped fried eggs, is a light-hearted homage to a distant relative, Boob on a Plate takes a more serious look at the scourge of breast cancer. But there's a note of humor, with the prominent display of a jar of "Listen To Your Mother."

At first glance, Clifford's Fred, Mary, and Chuck each appear stone-faced and dazed, just staring out from their monochrome backgrounds. But give them a few moments, and they start working their magic on you. These strangers slowly metamorphose into your relatives or friends -- or even yourself. By saying little, Clifford tells a lot.

It is obvious that both Clifford and Jeppson enjoy what they are doing. Not only is the final image important to them, but the process of getting there is as well. In works like the mixed-media on plastic Somewhere Is a Mirror we see Jeppson's every move, from the placement and replacement of the bear's head to the heavily reworked spirit figure. And though Clifford's figures may seem simple and off-hand, they are really made up of complex color arrangements that affect our understanding of his works almost as much as the imagery itself.

In a time when many people feel that they have been relegated to the status of mere numbers, Clifford and Jeppson show us that every individual is special.

The Moll Art Center is open Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m., Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m., and by appointment. Call 849-3442.