JOHN WHALLEY
The Hidden Hand
John Whalley and his wife, Ellen, look forward to summer when flea markets bloom along the byways of Maine. Last year’s “find” was a long, horizontal, late 19th-century photograph of a group of women dressed in white—each had her life and together they had a purpose which to us is now a mystery.
The ladies are the backdrop for a painting that will be included in the exhibition John Whalley: “The Hidden Hand” at Vose Galleries in Boston, May 18 through June 29. The title refers to “both the hidden hand behind the making of the painting itself, as well as the hands that made the objects in the paintings and used them, adding the patinas and signs of use embedded on their surfaces,” he explains.
The Ladies appear behind two bottles from an apothecary shop, one of which bears the mysterious label “to put out fire.” Whalley’s scrupulous attention to detail brings them all back to life, encouraging us to contemplate the role of the ladies and the contents of the bottles. The taller bottle obscures four of the ladies, reminding us that they will forever be in the past and a mystery.
As a boy, Whalley would take his boat out onto a pond armed with a microscope his grandmother had given to him. He would scoop up pond scum and examine it closely. “I always love just observing things that are almost out of reach—there were little creatures and algae that you couldn’t see with the naked eye‚” he says. “I also enjoyed looking at the stars through a telescope. I love to honor all those little details I see through close observation. I want to record them as faithfully as possible so another person can see them.”
Looking around his immaculate and orderly studio that is, nevertheless, chock-a-block full of fascinating objects from the past, one shelf stands out. It contains blue chalk, plumb lines and blue Edgeworth Tobacco tins. “I fell in love with that beautiful color,” he says as he was beginning to think about paintings for the
exhibition. A blue chalk line, used by carpenters to snap a straight line on a board before the days of lasers, contrasts with the yellow label of a tobacco tin in Blue Line. They are joined by apothecary bottles in front of a warmly colored board from a collection of variously colored and textured backgrounds he keeps handy for his still lifes.
A blue lunch box sits on a blue crate with two ripe red apples plucked from the apple tree outside his studio window in Lunch Tin and Apples.
He comments, “I find a more genuine joy in taking everyday, ‘unbeautiful’ things [and] placing them in a setting and painting them in as true a way as I can, so their real beauty can be discovered by the viewer. I prefer this to taking the obviously beautiful and painting it adequately. I am after the beauty that speaks softly, is often overlooked, and yet when discovered, is a source of great pleasure.”
Vose Galleries 238 Newbury Street • Boston, MA 02116 • (617) 536-6176 • www.vosegalleries.com
“When I look at a John Whalley painting,
I am reminded of a split moment in time. Like a hot summer day when I grabbed the backyard hose and felt that first touch of the cool metal nozzle in my hand. Just the nozzle, never overwhelming to recall, and lending a quiet smile all my own.” — Susan Nicole Gibbs, curator, Delta Air Lines