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Fiber optic

Jane Sutherland's canine canvases

by Leon Nigrosh

ALLURING REALITIES: CLOSE OBSERVATIONS OF LANDSCAPE, ARCHITECTURE, AND CANINE COMPANIONS BY JANE SUTHERLAND At the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell, through January 25,1998.

Jane Sutherland had been teaching painting at Fairfield University in Connecticut for 25 years, but it wasn't until she retired last year that she thought of herself as a painter. Suddenly finding time on her hands, she decided to devote herself to the thing she knew best: painting full time. Following that old admonition, "Paint what you see,'' Sutherland began an earnest study of local fences, gateposts, and gates.

Fence on Old Post Road, the largest of her works currently on display at the Brush Art Gallery, provides a thorough Realist examination of a white rail fence as it breaches a thicket of richly verdant foliage. Sutherland's adept paint handling presents a treatment of light and shade so bright that we can easily feel the heat from the midday sun. Each leaf and grass blade stands on its own and yet becomes an integral part of the overall profusion of greenery.

Compare this approach with Sutherland's pastel version of the same site completed around the same time. Here, with a few broad, quick strokes, the plantlife is presented in a more abstract manner, offering less detail but just as much depth and movement. An earlier gouache-on-paper version of the same fence presents a somewhat more lyrical composition, with the bleached wood posts seeming to dance through the sun-sparkled bushes.

Her oil-on-linen Doorgate again shows off Sutherland's ability to focus on the nuances of sunlight as it plays over and through leafy shrubs, casting shadows on a white wooden gate to create a hot spot that then reflects off the structure right into the viewers' eyes. In Cast Iron Gate, Sutherland interlaces a sinuous filigree of rusting metal with vines of broad-leafed vegetation to produce a composition in which natural and manmade elements compete for our attention.

Her technical proficiency in rendering these landscape vignettes in no way detracts from the overall impression of being allowed a peek into private spaces rich with lavish color and abundant light. Many of the landscapes offer a hint of nostalgia, a wish to return to more peaceful times and places -- and she accomplishes this feeling without falling into the trap of cloying cuteness.

While still concerned with combining architectural and natural elements into her paintings, Sutherland has recently become fascinated with making virtual portraits of dogs. It started while on a trip to Egypt in late 1996, when she spotted a mongrel basking in the half-sun half-shade of a Cairo street. This scene became the small canvas Dog In Egypt. Dog in Maine shows a Gordon Setter in a repose similar to a nearby stone-sculpted garden lion. With these two works, Sutherland began to portray qualities innate to dogs, rather than just character portraits.

One of her more controversial paintings is a life-sized portrait of Sprig, a Hungarian Vizla hunting dog, posed in all his male glory. The canvas was removed from a recent exhibit because it was considered "very distracting.'' If Sutherland should be called to task for anything negative about this picture, it is the fact that she cropped this majestic dog's front paws from the canvas.

Sutherland's tour de force in this exhibition is her series The Monty Paintings, 12 stop-action panels of her dog, Monty, as he dives into a pool and retrieves a tennis ball. It all sounds pretty mundane, but it is just that aspect that makes these paintings so interesting. She has taken everyday incidents that many dog owners witness and isolated and transformed them into aesthetic and artistic situations to be appreciated in a new light.

Winslow Homer's combination of observation and imagination and Degas's tightly cropped paintings are acknowledged influences that Sutherland readily employs in this series. Starting with a number of photos taken with a motor-drive camera, she selected specific moments of Monty's activity (the dog's full name is Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, after the World War II military commander) and amplified the imagery, replacing certain elements and enhancing others. The varied treatment of the water is a case in point. In one panel, Sutherland uses a palette knife to lay out her resonant colors; in another, she pushes the paint around with her fingers. Although the dog is always the center of attention, it is Sutherland's manipulation of the surroundings that makes each panel unique -- and the whole series a pleasant yet challenging experience.

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