nothin Artist (Re)Works It Out | New Haven Independent

Artist (Re)Works It Out

Julia Gill Photo

Cunningham and Keen.

Standing in her Erector Square studio on a recent afternoon, New Haven-based artist Jan Cunningham recalled a bodily reaction to a series of charcoal drawings she had made.

A few years ago, Cunningham invited a friend — a sophisticated collector,” she said — to view her recent series of charcoal drawings. That friend, a woman in her 90s, stomped her feet and exclaimed, I just do not understand someone who has a sense of color, as you do, limiting themselves to black and white!”

Cunningham laughed and admitted, I was as happy as she was to move back to color again.”

Today, color is central to Cunningham’s work as an abstract painter. Her intentionally limited palette — a subtle array of blue, red, black, and white — lend themselves to a surprising variety of results. Intensity, for one, varies greatly in Cunningham’s current oeuvre. Take Flank and Keen, two of Cunningham’s paintings from the last year. The former combines the strength of ultramarine blue with the resolve of black to create a work of assured confidence. The latter stands in stark contrast, exuding nervous uncertainty about the relationship between the light grey and pale red. 

Jan Cunningham

Flank.

These striking differences arise from Cunningham’s masterful manipulation of proportionality and abstract figuration — two elements emphasized by her sparse palette.

I really loved the graphic nature of the blue, the black, and the white,” she said, so I decided just to limit it with the occasional red.” Cunningham described her use of color as subtractive,” a way of paring down to the essentials.” 

Cunningham described her desire to seek proportionality in almost spiritual terms. Proportion is something that is very very important to me,” she said. I practice it in my work and it helps me practice it in my life.”

She is pleased when her work gets to be about the dimensions of the canvas itself.” And yet, practicing proportionality is not as easy as quartering a canvas and expecting to find resolution. On proportionality, Cunningham said, we feel it in the world around us before we see it.” It can be ineffably satisfying to feel a work of art that strikes a harmonious balance between color, space, and form.

Cunningham’s abstract figures can come in the form of charcoal lines drawn into wet paint or traced templates of arcs and ellipses. She described her abstract figures tenderly, referring to them as characters” who tell a story.” Pointing to her canvases, she said, a figure — a character — could play this role in this short story and this role in this other short story.” She quickly corrected me when I referred to the recurring symbols” in her painting, saying, well yes, the characters.”

Julia Gill Photo

Cunningham’s studio

I know that I’m an abstract painter,” Cunningham continued, while pointing to one of her unfinished works, but I still think of this as a figure in the room.” Even though Cunningham works abstractly, she’s not interested in doing away with the traditional hallmarks of painting.

Artists,” she said, are so at pains to say, no, no, no, it’s not a horizon.’ Well it is, that’s just how humans are, that’s how we view things.” Pointing at a vertical line in one of her unfinished works she said, this line reminds me of a tennis racquet balancing on your hand.” Although she wore a mask, I could almost see her smile as she considered the affecting images that emerge from her — often fateful — combinations of delicate lines and muted tones.

They are fateful because Cunningham sometimes draws with her eyes closed. She enjoys the blindfolded process because the results are singularly meaningful to her.

They’re much more real,” she said, than if you’re looking at it and judging it.” She’s increasingly using this process in her paintings, closing her eyes and feeling her way around the canvas before drawing lines. Cunningham’s zest for the unplanned parts of life and art may be what allowed her to creatively adapt to the pandemic. 

Jan Cunningham

Eyes Closed New Triptych.

Early last year, she nervously watched the pandemic disrupt global supply chains for art supplies. Fearful that she would not be able to buy canvases anytime soon, she began reworking old paintings.

It started out of scarcity when we went into the lockdown,” Cunningham said. I counted all of my blank canvases in my storeroom and … the place I rely on for stretchers shut down.”

But the pandemic was not the sole reason she returned to older works. Cunningham also thought to herself, you can do better than that now.” Pointing to one painting that she has reworked over the last few months, Cunningham said, that painting is a much more complex painting than the one that preceded it.” Three years later, Cunningham thinks of the old painting as setting the scene” for her newest reworking. 

Jan Cunningham

Passage, reworked from an earlier painting, Blue Volume.

While some might feel devastated at the idea of painting over their old work — a sign that they had wasted months on a now invisible project — Cunningham views it as just part of the artistic process.

I always prefer to work slowly and deeply rather than quickly,” she said. We don’t always understand things instantly … sometimes they kind of dawn on us, and I’m really interested in that process.”

The question of what will dawn on Jan Cunningham next will be worth following. A talented photographer whose photographs are in the Yale Art Gallery’s collection, she may return to the camera soon.

I miss it,” she said. I want to start using film again, and I want to photograph people.”

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