Call of the wild

Kathy Hodge's insightful landscapes

by Leon Nigrosh

KATHY HODGE: PAINTINGS OF THE NATURAL WORLD At the Douglas Arts Common, 274 Main Street, Douglas, through February 1.

Kathy Hodge has more than 20 large oil paintings and an assortment of watercolors, pastels, and prints currently on exhibition at the Douglas Arts Common (formerly the Paradis Arts Gallery) in which we can readily see her attempts "to make sense of the world." There is nothing dreary in her canvases, even the gray rocks in Mt. Monadnock and Break seem to glow from within. Her colors are warm and inviting. Her brushwork, often likened to van Gogh's, is far less frenetic but retains a vitality that carries us from one place to another within each composition. And her subjects are readily recognizable, even though they are personal impressions rather than accurate representations.

Hodge's studio is a tiny widow's watch perched atop her house in Warren, Rhode Island, and though she can see forever in all directions, she constantly feels the need to be directly immersed in her natural surroundings in order to fully capture its essence. The sounds and smells, as well as the sights that Hodge experiences on her daily run along a bike path through the nearby salt marshes bring added emotion to her large canvas Disappearance of Light. As a great oval sunset of yellows and white radiates low on the horizon, the forest of reeds appears to shield other living things while it reaches for the darkening purple-blue sky.

These same salt marshes also figure prominently in Hodge's Elements of Winter series. Five large canvases present the season awash in brilliant light. Bright blue-white snow covers vast areas of the marshes, disguising some typical features while boldly building new forms as in Seek. Rather than cold and hostile, Hodge shows us that winter can be sunny and inviting. For added mystery and enjoyment, she has bordered each of these works with cast-resin frames embedded with actual sea shells, feathers, fish skeletons, and beach stones.

To further become one with nature, Hodge has taken advantage of a little-known program of artist residencies offered by the National Park Service. Living alone on a mountain range or in a shack in the sand dunes for two weeks can do wonders for one's perception of nature. Taking snapshots and making quick sketches, Hodge later transforms these into larger works like her Cannon Mountain, in which the passive mountain plays a lesser role than do the taut tree limbs, luminous vegetation, and energetic clouds. Curiously, this painting bears a strong relationship to a rare watercolor painted by Albrecht Dürer in 1503. In The Great Piece of Turf, Dürer reveals the wonders of an ordinary patch of weeds with this ground-level close-up of dandelions and field grasses shooting skyward from the damp earth. Although Hodge was not aware of this particular work, her painting has the similar aspect of presenting the subject matter as if it were being seen for the first time.

It is just this quality of wonder that makes Hodge's work so interesting and accessible. Along with her interest in physics and the chaos theory, which suggests that everything is intertwined in evolving patterns, she also believes that "art is a common subliminal bridge for people'' and that shapes and colors communicate in a manner that everyone can understand. As you slowly peruse her colorful paintings, let Hodge's forms, lines, and broad spectrum palette sweep you into her landscapes. Let them talk to you about things far greater than the actual sites. Let them remind you of the essential elements of nature, the ones that Hodge relies on to complete her paintings: earth, air, water, and even fire -- the light from within.

The Douglas Arts Common is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 476-7082.