Noticing their surroundings is what many artists do so well; how they express it often reveals more than the subject. Recent shows by Nashville’s Sylvia Hyman and Suzanne Stryk (Cumberland Gallery April 26 – May 24, 2003) and Jean Hess (TAC gallery) are cases in point… [section about Hyman and Hess omitted]
A sense of controlled order has long infused Suzanne Stryk’s paintings and drawings of insects and birds on solid dark grounds, which feel a bit like butterflies pinned to a board. Although the work raises questions about species diversity and extinction, the artist remains a mute, studious observer. Many of this show’s acrylic paintings on wood and paper seemed journal-like, covered with notes and sketches and divided into sections that could accommodate different kinds of information. But Stryk also engages in fanciful still-life constructions—making ladders out of feathers and posing marionette-like dancing crabs on strings. These gently startling manipulations recall the subdued surrealism of Max Ernst frottages (rubbings from nature) and Joseph Cornell’s birdcage constructions.
A recent residency in Port Townsend, Washington has supplied Stryk with a new range of natural found objects. The confluence of inspiration and imagination has led to her most successful paintings to date: “Explorer’s Last Wish” (2002), an image of flying crabs and a suspended clam shell; “Still Life with Holdfasts” (2002), a monumental Stonehenge of creature-like plants against a long horizon; and “Balancing Act,” a scene of seashell totem poles that also encompasses drawing of the totem poles. While this ambitious work promises to pull Stryk away from the strictures of objective recording, a summer exhibition at Atlanta’s Fernbank Museum of Natural History will pull her into the close orbit of a more literal-minded audience.
