Allan Appel Photo
Detail from June Webster’s “Ticket to Ride.”
If Anne Doris-Eisner is a bit of an evangelist for the healing and redemptive power of making art, she has earned it, through a breakthrough in medium and subject matter after the death of her teenage son Matt.
Two of Doris-Eisner’s works — large and dramatic images in black acrylic paint of torn tree parts out of which new growth is emerging — are among 79 works by 63 artists in the 116th annual juried art exhibition of the venerable New Haven Paint & Clay Club.
Eisner discoverd a heart in her “Tree Series No. 14, New Haven,” acrylic on paper.
After temporarily losing access to the John Slade Ely House, which has been purchased by ECA/ACES — the club’s shows have been exhibited there for decades — the club is in its second year strutting its stuff at the nearby Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) on Audubon Street.
There oil paintings, collages, watercolors, pastels, monotypes, encaustics, mixed media, and a handful of sculptures — no photographs are allowed — are filling up the two floors of CAW’s gallery space with color, verve, and variety. The exhibit runs at CAW through July 30.
The show’s works were selected and by Richard Klein, the director of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield.
Artist Photo
Eisner’s “Tree Series No. 15, Durham,” acrylic on paper.
Doris-Eisner, secretary of the club, was on hand recently to give a brief tour of the works, including June Webster’s “Ticket to Ride,” which she stopped to admire.
A long-time and now retired art teacher at Amity High School, Doris-Eisner brought her good eye to look at Webster’s composition, the subject matter of which appears to be the blur of activity at New York’s Grand Central Station ticket window.
Club Photo
Webster’s “Ticket to Ride,” watercolor and collage.
She admired the cubistic shifting of planes and unexpected elements, such as how one rushing traveler has feet made of bricks and another is shlepping a large valise comprised of or decorated with time tables.
“I like that it goes beyond expert technique. It’s not just copying from life, but is helping us see with new eyes, as if you’re there,” she said.
She approached the work, then backed away, then looked again, and added: “The more you look at certain pieces, the more you learn.”
Opioids, Death & Artistic Rebirth
Doris-Eisner knows whereof she speaks, both about learning from tragedy and art. She lost her son Matthew to opioids when he was a teenager 16 years ago. Even while he was struggling with the problem, Doris-Eisner said that she sensed his struggle was reflected in her own feeling that she’d reached a turning point, a point of no return, in her artistic work.
Club Photo
“Medusa,” mixed media by Rashmi Talpade won a top prize and was also purchased by the club for its permanent collection.
When her son died, she could no longer paint pretty pictures. She had already taken some time to be in residence at an arts center in Atlin, British Columbia. She walked across glacial moraines. She studied trees and landscape by being profoundly in forests. She encountered teachers who urged her not only to make images but to keep a diary, to hone on what really was both personally important and universal as well.
She emerged switching to working entirely in black and white and focussing on trees, especially where there has been a trauma to a trunk or limb, and yet where the tree had found a way to heal itself and continue to grow.
This was a great discovery for her, she said: Before and after her son’s death “I was in great emotional distress,” she said. “I had a power inside me that wasn’t being expressed.”
What she discovered through going deeper into this new direction in her work was “the great universal issue of how things go on living, a life force.”
Edward Bishop’s “Dead Horse-Mystic Seaport,” oil on board, in foreground.
Now when she works, Doris-Eisner said in the midst of following her visual instincts, adding paint, using different parts of the brush, scraping, working through the visual metaphors that comprise her work, she thinks of her son as well.
“I really credit him with helping me reveal a deeper potential to connect with others. I’m no longer making pretty pictures. I find people tell me my work resonates. I’m working in metaphor. I feel like I’m close to him while working in my studio. I feel like I’m honoring him.”
Club Photo
“She Used to be Mine: A Self Portrait, oil on panel, by Rachel Carlson, this year’s top prize winner.
Doris-Eisner is also out there, showing her work at other venues in New Haven and at a current show in Brooklyn.
In so doing, she’s not just showing her work, but as she put it, continuing her work as a teacher, with a huge new lesson about the restorative power of art, to communicate and to heal.
Next up for the New Haven Paint & Clay Club is a members’ show — you can apply for membership after your work has been anonymously selected in at least two of the juried shows— this fall. The location is uncertain because the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA/ACES) did not receive all the funding for their John Slade Ely House renovation that was expected, she added.
The current exhibition is viewable through July 30 during CAW hours, Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
