Capturing the Now
Two New Mexico artists come together at Manitou Galleries for Spiritual Surroundings, a show of new, complimentary pieces by landscape painter Jeff Cochran and bronze sculpture artist Liz Wolf. Cochran feels that he and Wolf share a “strong connection to nature and the mysterious powers and unexplainable craziness that happens in the ‘wilds’ of New Mexico. I think we are both artists that are interested in capturing the ‘now.’”
Cochran continues that his new series of paintings is really a “focus on moments of light that are such a fragment of time that the viewer feels like the paint fell into place just a few minutes ago. Cochran also notes he’s employed this immediacy not only with light, but with moments of weather. “I have spent years drawing with paint and I feel like this is the first time that I have let the paint fall into place,” he says “It has been so much more fun and less controlled, which is new for me. Letting go of control is not easy and trusting the paint to do the magic is next level and I think I knocked on that door with this set of paintings.
Cochran gathers inspiration from his surroundings in Taos amid alfalfa fields, and where he cares for an organic vegetable farm. “Running a small-scale farm has really connected me to the nature and the weather in ways that I never thought possible,” he explains, “The yin and the yang of the weather and atmosphere in New Mexico is strong. It can be sunny and beautiful and then it can be dark and stormy but still incredibly beautiful, and those are the moments I love.” Cochran believes his oil paintings Tumbling Through the Trees and Float Like a Feather, pictured here, are his most successful captures of those moments.
Santa Fe artist, Liz Wolf, feels that her sculptures contribute to the “quietness” found in Cochran’s pieces, as well as “a stillness
with a hint of mystery.” While both artists share this common ground, Wolf approaches her work differently. “I feel the sculpture takes part in its own creations. I listen and we continue to work together,” she says. “If I had to choose one word to describe my artwork it would be ‘animism,’ one of man’s oldest beliefs that in every object, a spirit or soul exists. I want to infuse my sculptures with a quietness about them and a spirit within them, so they create their own energy and have the ability to communicate.”
Wolf communicates through new show pieces like Dog Dreams, that’s reminiscent of the artist interacting with her sleeping dog Emma. “[She] loves to sleep and snore and is irresistible, so I will crouch down with her while she’s sleeping,” says Wolf. “When she dreams, she often starts a running motion with all four legs, and I will never know what her dream is about. I find myself so close to her I can feel her breath on me…like my sculpture, I’m becoming dog-like just to get that much closer to her.”
In Daydream, another spellbinding, dreamthemed piece, we see a female figure clasping her knees to her chest as she appears lost in thought. “The sculpture represents the definition of daydream,” Wolf explains. “It is a series of pleasant thoughts that distract one’s attention from the present: she was lost in a daydream.”
To witness more powerful yet “quiet,” poignant moments in art, join Manitou Galleries from September 2 through 30 in celebration of around 25 new pieces by Wolf and Cochran.
For a direct link to the exhibiting gallery go to
www.westernartcollector.com