Leap of Faith / Act of Nature by Catherine Howe

"One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy." (From Richter, 'Notes 1973', in The Daily Practice of Painting, p.78.)

The New York Academy of Art Post-Graduate Fellows are three emerging artists who have steeled themselves against the torrents of banal imagery to pursue the mysterious act of painting. Mystery with a capital "M" is at the core of all belief and is an inescapable aspect of all faith: faith in beauty, reason, goodness, or anything that matters and sustains us.

Conversely, it is doubt and the awareness of the sublime expanse of unknown space that lurks both within the painting and at the center of ourselves that puts the exciting spin on this art of arts, the rendering of a world out of the whiteness.

All three young painters tenderly express their painterly faith and the heady, dizzying belief in making something alive out of mere pigments.William Bolton presents a semi-abstract field of paint where acts of God and nature may be either inevitable or merely a cruel ruse, a random series of lightening strikes. He chooses animals both alive and extinct as our heroes, being both articulated/created and obscured/destroyed by the swirling brush strokes of the artist. There is no Pollock-"artist as nature" belief system left- we are only redeemed by noticing the beauty of our surrender to queen-nature or perhaps our idea of God.

Veronica Obermeyer redirects her cast of ordinary humans into the roles of saints. Esp. saints with the most gruesome fates. A small, androgynous child stands in for poor St. Agatha, revealing for our astonished gaze a plate of perfect breasts, while retaining his/her own nascent buddings, still perfectly formed. The painstaking detail and homage to old master craft sets this work up as a testament to the painting-faithful: those who mix oil and illusion in an alchemical formula for flesh. The odd sadness and ordinariness of her subjects chaff against the sublimity, the art-catalyst of human doubt again, taking action.

Thomas Carlson's paintings could be seen as sentimental glimpses of his domestic bliss: soft-focus daydreams of the right stuff. They are possibly more than that. There is grayness and a stillness that allows him a morbid fascination with detail. Detail here, is not expressed in some poetic composition, but a random, "more than we needed to see" view of ordinary life. This fact strips away the prosaic formula for genre- painting success, and endangers the very stability o the world Carlson has so carefully ordered.

Today, these new works made by three young artists may be seen as evidence of those who are still thrilled by painting. Their youthful passion perhaps eases the leap of faith that is required to make something, or to really look out and in, then conjure up something to cover the nothingness that is the canvas.

Catherine Howe is a New York painter and a member of the full-time faculty at the Academy. She is represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery.