The canvases are beautifully engineered machines, which generate a psychic event upon viewing. There is a spaciousness in her paintings, which exists somewhere between the figures she creates and the way in which she paints them, so that viewing her canvases has a pulse. The eye travels back and forth between the finely toned backgrounds and the inexplicable juxtapositions of landscape and situation. These inexplicable situations are an open field, an open equation. Their mystery is friendly. The intensity is nurturing. She suggests life with an impeccable magic and trouble. Laughter is one of her glazes. It runs wickedly around with the other colors. She has broken down the grammar of myth, enwrapped the chemical formula of fable with pigment, and used it to evoke the central mystery of life. Over and over, she paints with unreal colors the blight in the air before a lightning storm. Everything is still then, except for our breathing, and our heart slowly registering the tricky essence of existence. We realize only that something elemental is going on, but investigating the mystery only leads us back to this moment of grace.
California writer and designer Theresa Whitehill’s poetry and poetic essays have been published by Stags’ Leap Winery, Alice Waters, Appellation Magazine, and numerous regional literary publications.