Symbol minds

Drawing inspiration from dreams

by Leon Nigrosh

DREAMWEAVERS: SYMBOLIST TENDENCIES IN CONTEMPORARY NEW ENGLAND ART At the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell, through February 7, 1999.

The glue that holds this exhibition together is the dominant presence of angels, creatures of the night, and spirits -- all redolent with personal symbolism. But each of the nine artists represented works in his or her distinctly individual manner; together, though, they either escape the mundane into a vivid dream world or view the ordinary with an extraordinary vision. Many of these artists keep dream journals, drawing inspiration from their notes. Several allow their materials and medium to suggest the images in a fashion not unlike automatic writing. In fact, in 1886, the French writer Jean Moreas first applied the term "Symbolism" to characterize his fellow writers' poetic attempts to describe the "transcendental or otherworldly" by using this novel approach to writing.

The works by Gregory Gillespie were prepared through this type of activity. To escape from the rigors of his Realist paintings, Gillespie smears and spreads paint on surface, much like a kindergartner applies finger-paint. After the swirls have set, he examines the surface to see what creatures might emerge. In his small Mediator and the Dog, we might not immediately place the authority figure, but the animal is recognizable. Other faces soon emerge from the flowing paint as well. Produced with the same technique, Gillespie's mostly brown Riverbank is filled with people with the faces of gnomes, elves, and faeries peeking out from behind and within tree trunks and gnarled roots.

Shelburne Falls artist Christin Couture develops her paintings in just the opposite manner. Lovingly labored over, her slick-surfaced acrylic-on-panel images exude mystical visions akin to René Magritte's (1868-1967) meticulously enunciated surreal landscapes. Couture's Pajama Man in Tree shows us just that, a man in white gazing down upon a small house as he stands, arms outspread, in the crotch of a leafy apple tree -- all silhouetted by a night-blue sky. The symbolic possibilities are endless. What is more amazing, however, is that this is a childhood recollection of an actual incident in which an escapee from a nearby mental facility spent the night in the Couture family orchard, leaving at first light.

Loosely based on an incident she experienced in Mexico, Couture's The Flood (Predella) takes us, left to right, from people tubing in the muddy water, through a series of ominously empty rooms to a half-submerged car. The fastidious treatment of the wallpaper patterns, the rug design, and the woodgrained floors serve to heighten the unnamed fantasy we experience.

Nanny Vonnegut's symbolism is often strongly related toward family and religion. Her colored-pencil-on-paper Bath Time features the pregnant artist and her two little children enjoying a communal bath, clothing strewn about the bathroom, as seen from above. We are witnessing an apparently joyful scene. But in the tradition of 17th-century Dutch painting, the picture within the picture is a somber baptismal scene with robed persons illuminated by their halos. With this discovery, we make another -- the soaking family members have halos as well. Equally as enigmatic is Vonnegut's mixed-media and gouache Ambition, which takes place in a high-walled room open to the stars. A woman with a snake extended from her mouth is about to attack the mouse coming from the mouth of a man (possibly the artist's famous author father?). An angel can be seen bursting in one window as demons enter another, and in the center of the picture we see Jonah being gobbled by the fabled fish. As to the meaning of the scene, we are left to our own devices.

Each of the 30 paintings in this colorful, inventive, poetic, and sometimes moody exhibit, brings with it a multitude of interpretations which exposes the artists' deepest thoughts and dreams not just as personal catharsis but with the understanding that by revealing themselves to us, we might begin to open up to others, and if not that, at least start to accept ourselves.

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