Woman's work

Wedding shots at Fletcher/Priest

by Leon Nigrosh

AXELLE FORTIER: IT'S MORE THAN WHAT YOU SEE! At the Fletcher/Priest Gallery, 5 Pratt Street, Worcester, through December 24.

Axelle Fortier may use brushes and paint to create her expressive work, but she's more than simply an artist, she is a storyteller. Each of the 17 paintings currently on display at the Fletcher/Priest Gallery is a riot of bright colors, swirling across the sheet and finally assembling themselves to present a vignette populated by individuals who seem vaguely familiar -- and are involved in uncomfortable situations that are somehow familiar as well.

For this exhibition, her first on the East Coast, Fortier, who lives in Los Angeles, offers a substantial taste of her consuming interest in both social action and human foibles. By incorporating an illustrative painting style with written commentary scrawled directly into the composition, she creates active, tongue-in-cheek images that belie their apparent exuberance and often raise questions of a more important nature. For example, her large tempera painting First Day Care Centers shows dozens of dark-skinned women appearing to play with as many infants and toddlers in a bower of trees. A group of masked and body-painted men in the foreground is holding to bits of written material that exhort the women to refrain from tying their babies onto the tree trunks before they set off to work. A flurry of questions immediately arises. Is Fortier portraying a true story of some aboriginal tribe? Is this some playful figment of her imagination? Or is this a pointed question with regard to the treatment of our own offspring?

Depictions of weddings and marriages make up a portion of this exhibit. Three images from a series Fortier painted and collaged on handmade paper in 1989 tell the stories, literally, of three ill-fated couples. Fortier's commentary, written to surround the pair shown lovingly in She Couldn't Be Happier, gives them just three months. Her sarcastic text has the bride from Frank & Cheryl losing interest and then working her way up to become a five-pink-Cadillac Mary Kay rep. In an animated composition, Spring Brides, Fortier exposes the emotional state of five brides as they prepare to leap over (or into?) a bottomless chasm that separates them from their equally perplexed intended.

In The Confused Bride we see another woman, this time with her tearful bridesmaids precariously balanced on a spit of land completely surrounded by water. This particular figurative arrangement has a veiled, yet uncanny reference to Botticelli's famous 15th-century painting The Birth of Venus, which shows a young woman in all her glory surrounded by her attendants while standing on an oyster half-shell.

Several references to the courageous and outspoken Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1952) appear, particularly in one small watercolor, which sums up the California cult status this woman has attained. In These Days All the Girls Want To Look Like Frida Kahlo, we see a bevy of languid females -- all with thick, overdrawn eyebrows.

Humor aside, Kahlo's influence can be seen in much of Fortier's work. Her energetic use of hot colors, the juxtaposition of disparate elements, and the distinct feminine experience serve to enrich Fortier's imaginative and evocative works. Like Kahlo, she also makes good use of intricate and complex patterning throughout her paintings, drawing upon Latino, African, and early Persian art for further inspiration. My Demon Hands is overloaded with brighly colored patterns of buttons, pins, tape, and threads, as many darkly colored hands push and pull at a pair of light-hued hands, forcing them to keep on working.

Women's work also plays a role in My Incredibly Rich Emotional Life as a Married Woman, in which we are witness to a female besieged with dirty dishes and trash and arguing with a slob husband. There is, however, a positive note to all of this, for the woman is being guided and comforted by a white-clad, dark-skinned goddess.

Fortier's high level of personal energy is the motivational force throughout the entire exhibit. Her observations and emotions just pour out of every sheet of paint-filled paper, sweeping us right along with her and making this exhibition really much more than what you see.

The gallery is open Wednesday and Thursday from noon to 6 p.m. and by appointment. Call 791-5929.