Anchorage Daily News

VISUAL ARTS: 'Gonna Sing My Head Off' Dale Fairbanks solo exhibition
By DON DECKER
Daily News arts reviewer

 

It's exciting to see someone go for it, just press the pedal to the metal. When Dale Fairbanks created art for her solo exhibition at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, that's precisely what she did. Her huge oil paintings now hung on high walls embody what she wrote about herself in her artist statement: "I paint like I sing: loud, obnoxious, off-key and always out of tune."

Her work, of large sizes rarely seen in Alaska, is an unblended stir of styles, techniques and design -- almost as though each painting were a collaboration. Geometric shapes fight against organic form. Objects are juxtaposed with elements of pure abstraction. Pastels mingle with intense primary hues. Large areas of flat color surround splashes of subtle brushwork. There are stars and stripes; there are hearts and boxes, flags and flowers. There are coffins, dots and circles, ovals and lines. The paintings are not consistent, either within each frame or in relation to one another.

Some aspects of her work do show a debt to the past, such as modernist principles of design and an abstractionist's devotion to spontaneously brushing paint on canvas. Anyone who has tried to paint as expressionists or impressionists do will recognize the common struggle inherent in the process of pushing pigment around. It's about trying to make things "work," saving the "happy accident," overpainting, softening edges, controlling yet not controlling the flow of pigment.

At first look, I found the work a little unsettling. As compositions, they are not the kind I like most or would do myself. The way the paint is applied is not what I prefer. There is a big bear shape that's not quite a bear. The orange and pink teardrop shapes in "She'll Be Coming 'Round" are too much for me in their context. The largest piece, "America the Beautiful" has a huge flag in it, and I don't like flags in paintings. (I didn't even like Jasper Johns' flag paintings.) There is a series of large white, fishlike shapes in a painting called "Shall We Gather" that bother me. The same painting contains a series of strict vertical lines in the midst of softer, curvilinear shapes. They conflict.

Yet, the more I studied her work, the more I was drawn into the massive planes of shape and color. I had to smile. I even started to enjoy the big flag. It's topical and meaningful. Its colors are vibrant. I admire it for what it says about the artist. She celebrates painting.

Creating works as large as these cannot be a casual endeavor. The costs, labor and logistics involved are exhaustive. Portfolios won't hold this stuff. As an average male, I don't dare say that bigger is better, but the sheer scale is the statement. The woman has chutzpah.

Art as personal expression puts an artist at risk. Fairbanks put herself out there, saying to a museum audience, in no uncertain terms, "This is me. This is what I do, think and feel. This is what I call art." After seeing her work, I am convinced of the sincerity of her artist statement, in which she writes, "I paint with blowers wide open and hold back not a thing. I paint without longing for acknowledgement, and I paint with no dread of appearing foolish." Not foolish at all, I think.

Walking into the large gallery that holds her work is like visiting someone who invited you in. Her work fills the space and surrounds you, making you feel welcome. The winter light from gallery skylights softly reflects from the surfaces to your eyes. When I left, I could still picture the canvases in my mind's eye, and feel their color.

Her show is titled "Gonna Sing My Head Off," and the paintings are titled after songs, i.e. "Big Rock Candy" or "Go Tell It." They are divided into mountain songs and river songs. She wrote in her artist statement, "I am in my element. These are my colored, sparkling jewels: wrapped with my grandfather in his swing. 'Sweet Chariot' his sole repertoire, my grandmother's ole gray goose dead, a pistol hidden under flowers in her basket ..." It's poetry, like her painting.

Fairbanks lived in Fairbanks for a decade and now resides in Gulf Breeze, Fla. Alaska's loss is Florida's gain. Now, in the stifling sun of a sizzling southern summer, they need savor their cool, refreshing breeze from Fairbanks