Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
Linear deliberations
|
Exhibition of New-York based Marcia Neblett’s graphics, drawings and prints
|
AT HER EXPRESSIVE BEST Marcia with one of her works
Drawing as a tool for representing nature, photographic realism or expressions had acquired a privileged position Renaissance onwards. An artist retrospecting to Renaissance tradition within the post-modern reality is Marcia Neblett, a post graduate
in painting and printmaking from State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York and presently in Chennai as a Fulbright Scholar teaching printmaking at the Government College of Fine Arts. She is showcasing her “Ten Years of Graphics – Drawing and Prints”.
Marcia’s oeuvre comprising of drawings and prints are worked in the extremes of sizes from large to small. Her figurative mode is both narrative and iconic i.e. single figure and objects with subjects ranging from portraits to vegetables and fruits as carrots, pineapple, corn, asparagus, artichoke, broccoli etc. The fruits and vegetables have an endearing quality because they imaginatively manifest human character radiating soulful effects.
Working on wood
Her wood block prints convey the genre of still life as well as fairy tales. By arbitrating through a medium as wood block – a labour intensive process – Marcia has interfaced her creativity, which metamorphoses as expressive statements. Wood block prints convey a startling contrast of black and white, but Marcia through her clever and dexterous manipulation of lines marvellously breaks the otherwise monotonous areas of whites or blacks. She enjoys the entire process of working through the wood, and compares it to meditation or a prayer. It is little wonder that she has been able to create such loving details in her prints particularly in the Hanzel and Gretal story. The narrative of Hanzel and Gretel is made sinister by emphasising on the evil characters and weaving a mystery through the gloomy blacks. Her representation of nature, architecture and human figures is sinuous bordering on the caricature. Marcia is redefining a genre that has lost its vitality and is expressing it with a contemporary sensibility. Her narratives serve as metaphors and speak in a language that vividly decries the loss of values in society.
In her charcoal and black wax crayon drawings, Marcia powerfully conveys her emotions through bold and dramatic strokes. Capitalising on the tool such as erasure, creating a coloured background by rubbing the pastel on the paper and with highlights in white, Marcia directs her composition to create titillating and provocative effects. Her forms and images do not invite pleasurable intervention, rather the caricatured or and the draconian imagery is articulated as metaphors to convey the realities of life. And through the narrative of the Red Riding Hood, Marcia creates her individuated visual language. Her inventive yet fearful visages in this story are conveyed through energetic strokes that vary from dark to subtle straight and curved lines. It is the controlled chiaroscuro that lends dynamism to her works. In many respects her images come through as self portraits conveying subtle humour.
An engagement with the self, mediated through mediums as graphic processes and charcoal drawings, Marcia creates her singular narrative that is an eloquent testimony to her passion and the intensity with which she feels for issues, especially feminine. The show is on at Lalit Kala Akademi, Greams Road till December 2.
ASHRAFI S. BHAGAT
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
|
