Remembering dad

Scott Redfern paints life-and-death matters

by Leon Nigrosh

SCOTT REDFERN: PAINTINGS AND PRINTS At the Fletcher/Priest Gallery, 5 Pratt Street, through June 11. Robert Frank Redfern was a guitar player who knew his way around the charts. Armed with his banjo and mandolin, he could pick bluegrass with the best of them, and he always gave the folkies a treat when he played his dulcimer. The love of music created a special bond between Redfern and his son Scott. Robert's untimely death in 1994 was a real blow to Scott. He was suddenly saddled with added family obligations and many unresolved issues.

The younger Redfern, who had a formal background in art, tried making sculptures in an attempt to work through his grief; eventually, he turned to painting for more immediate results. Prior to his father's death, Redfern had painted Maine landscapes and seascapes. But in his state of mourning, these images became irrelevant. Instead, a solitary figure began to emerge from within his canvases. From that moment until the present, Redfern has continued to work with his Sentinel, producing a seamless series of prints and paintings, 14 of which are currently on display at the Fletcher/Priest Gallery.

In this first solo exhibition, Redfern calmly explores issues of life and death. His singular figure, which was at first a reminder of his father and later of himself, has become more universal. The basic image always has the lower portion of a leg missing -- whether it is amputated or merely obscured remains an intriguing mystery.

These abstract works offer an introspective examination of the dichotomy of human imperfection and fear while, at the same time, offering a vision of grace and strength.

Redfern takes a non-decorative approach to his paintings, keeping texture at a minimum with no heavy impasto, and using his brushstrokes to spontaneously develop his fluid shapes. There is very little evidence of reworking. In fact, he claims to often be surprised that what he puts down on the canvas is really what he was thinking. He paints his gouaches directly, and what little undersketching that can be seen on his paintings serves primarily as textural nuance. Redfern easily incorporates his sentinel image in the appropriate scale for whichever medium he chooses, as if he has found the perfect fit.

The sentinel served as the basic matrix for four nine-by-12-inch collagraphs (prints made by gluing three-dimentional objects to a plate, inking them, and putting everything through a press). After printing, Redfern hand painted each one with a different color and pattern to produce unique figure/ground images.

In a four-by-five-foot red and black quartered canvas, Redfern offers two close-up portions of his sentinel along with two inverted figures. The upside-down figures evoke a lack of equilibrium similar to the late-'80s works of German artist George Baselitz, who used this device to portray the guilt and disorientation still felt by the Germans for World War II. Perhaps Redfern, who admires Baselitz, was attempting to project the same emotional distress in this canvas to help bring resolution to his own disturbing situation.

The largest Sentinel, standing at more than six feet in height, looks directly into the viewer's eyes with an almost beatific sensitivity. The black-on-red figure is surrounded by the faint outline of a guitar, an obvious reference to his father's musicality. It could also be taken as a reference to early Egyptian cartouche, hieroglyphic symbols containing a deceased king's name. This guitar-like shape can be found somewhere in almost all of the works in the show, along with the occasional flower or fish.

A single fish skeleton appears in one small gouache on paper, and a whole school of fish bones provides texture in a small diptych. Redfern uses this symbol as another metaphor in his exploration of the life/death issue. The flesh of the fish gives life, the bones commemorate this act.

The stylized image of a flower is strongest in Redfern's most recent painting and the primary color palette is the brightest. The sentinel figure has expanded through the boundaries within the quartered canvas. The guitar outline has increased in prominence and white-on-white-on-white flower petals (a memorial reference to his mother's interest in stencils) radiate from the upper-right quadrant. It is as though the artist has finally come to grips with his emotional attachments and has put everything into its proper perspective, literally and figuratively.

The Fletcher/Priest Gallery is open Wednesday and Thursday from noon to 6 p.m. and by appointment. Call 791-5929.