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Gail Hormats's journey into Abstract

by Leon Nigrosh

FROM MY PORCH: PAINTINGS BY GAIL HORMATS
At the Gordon Library, WPI, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, through December 18.

More than two-dozen recent paintings, on display in the Gordon Library gallery at WPI, reveal Gail Hormats's exploration into the realm of color in relation to mood and mind. The works themselves progress from landscapes to mindscapes with an increasingly abstract approach. Several earlier, small oil-stick-on-canvas paintings consist of leaf images that are readily recognizable. But these works are quickly superseded in time and scale by larger canvases that contain only the suggestion of any discernible objects -- such as the almost-hidden moon in Eclipse at Sea. Based on Hormats's recollections of last year's actual eclipse, she has transported this natural phenomenon onto an imaginary ocean of roiling purples and blues.

Thick impasto mountains are featured in the horizontal 24x36" She never came down and in the vertical The Height (of Madness). Although we are shown craggy, snow-capped peaks -- boldly contrasted against deep blue in the former and dovetailing into pastel blue in the latter -- it is obvious through the titles that we are viewing images of the artist's attempts to express pent-up emotions (both hers and ours). For Hormats it was a short, but difficult, leap from these quasi-representational pictures to compositions that consisted only of areas of heavily charged color that lack definable forms.

The 2x3' Tornado Watch bursts with brilliant flashes of red and orange, while slashes of glaze exacerbate the turbulence. Much like one of her Abstract Expressionist idols, Jackson Pollock, Hormats -- with brush strokes and changing colors -- is able to impart memories of an Ohio tornado through which she lived. Her 24d33m45s N x 81d48m09s W (map coordinates for the Bay of Key West) achieves a similar goal in representing the recollections of a past sunset.

Hormats's most recent works are strongly reminiscent of the color-field paintings done by Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, and Helen Frankenthaler. Although her compositions, technique, and scale are very different from the work produced in the '50s and '60s by such artistic pioneers, the intent is the same: as the artist delights in the direct experience of the manipulation of color to create moods, so should the viewer.

Core Sample could be seen as just that, a narrow tube made up chiefly of horizontally stratified green, ochre, and olive layers excised from the earth. In her larger Curtain Fall, subtle variations and gradations of purples, reds, and blues stream vertically over the canvas evoking a tranquil, yet foreboding mood. The largest and most recent and most alluring of the paintings in this new direction is the fiery Pele's Hearth, an homage to Hawaii's goddess of life, which is ablaze with vertical yellows, oranges, and reds that illuminate the umber darkness. Hormats explains that she wanted this painting to describe what it must feel like to be in the heart of a volcano.

As far as the choice of title for this show is concerned, it is as Hormats said, with a little effort she (and we) can see her back yard plants or a mountain range or the earth's magma while relaxing in the tranquillity of her back porch.

The WPI gallery is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 11 p.m. Call 831-5410.