Nice breeze

Sandy Swinand's cosmic views

by Leon Nigrosh

FORMED BY THE WIND: PAINTINGS BY SUSAN SWINAND At the University of Massachusetts Medical Center Lobby, 55 Lake Avenue North, through June 29.

Enter this exhibition of Susan Swinand's paintings and you enter a world of the subconscious, filled with fantasy forms floating in liquid space. Abstract shapes, which border on the almost-recognizable, populate nearly 50 pictures produced during a very prolific six-year period.

Whether working on small encaustics, large watercolors, or even larger oils on canvas, Swinand is often as surprised as her viewers are with the results. She begins each work with a random area of color or some sweeping gesture of paint, and progresses from that. Although the work may be rife with pencil or crayon marks, there are no underdrawings of any sort -- Swinand literally goes with the flow, following the paint, seeking new spatial relationships until the work is done. And how does she know when that is?

Swinand answers the question with a quote from one of her major influences, modernist painter Paul Klee (1879-1940), "You know the painting is finished when it looks back at you."

It is precisely this impression that permeates her work. The images not only appear to be exchanging intimacies, but the viewer becomes involved with the conversation. We are not simply looking at the swarm of fantastic aquatic creatures in From the Deep as it moves through the equally imaginative sargassum, but it is as if we are swimming with the swarm. Swinand's luminous use of color, the impression of depth she creates by overlapping elements, and the unabashed friendliness of her striped and dotted creatures, all serve to sweep us into the moment.

Triangles, ovals, and hearts interact with lines, dots, and areas of brilliant color to create windswept vistas or vast undersea landscapes. According to Swinand, this repeating iconography is not some deeply personal symbolism, but naturally occurs when she moves her brush. She does, however, invite us to attach our own meanings to these images. In her acrylic and mixed-media on paper Restless Forms IV, triangles seem to float across the space as if they were sailboats on a rolling sea. Similar triangles in Standing act as buffers, resisting the wind.

The wind is also a factor in two larger oils produced in 1996. We can actually see the wind as it pushes cones and globes about the landscape in Night Wind. But we can almost experience the tempest as it pushes against the humanoid figure that dominates Back to the Wind while it attempts to remain upright in the swirling desert sandstorm. Yet even in these potentially ominous situations, there is an underlying aura of rightness. Things are as they should be in the natural cosmic system. There is a palpable feeling of energy and matter coming into contact.

Swinand's paintings are a valid attempt to get beneath the surface to the essence of things. She does not paint trees and houses, animals and people. She paints about them. In a series of watercolors painted in 1993, her Wild Things, we can see slivers of the white paper serving as a buffer between Swinand's active translucent forms. The movement is there, but the interrelationship of forms remains tentative. Most recently, her colors have become deeply opaque and the compositions are much like jigsaw puzzles, as in the watercolor Symbiosis, with each piece firmly interlocked to its fanciful neighbors.

This exhibition provides a wonderful opportunity to see so many of Swinand's works together, to note the consistency of her efforts in differing media, and to enjoy the interplay among the works themselves. Swinand brings a certain level of joy to her work. She is interested in the spirit of things and the mysteries of life. This wellspring of positive energy is just the sort of visual imagery that should be seen at the entrance to a medical facility -- or, for that matter, anywhere else.

The gallery is open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Call 856-2000.