Strohbeen and Luchsinger 2021
Karen Strohbeen and Bill Luchsinger continue their wondrous journey of creating. The whimsy that attaches itself to Strohbeen’s animals, flowers, and patterns also finds a home in the more realistic works of Luchsinger. With color, line, and composition, the works in this 2021 online exhibit reveal and remind us of what we’ve known — joy remains (when we can clear our eyes to see it).
Strohbeen’s color flowers and animals have always brought a joyful offering for our reception. This exhibit is no different: we find the eclectic prints in their individual glories. Goats gambol, and in “Birdfish,” the all black and white work, two abstract images coexist to form a delicate puzzle, and the eye abides.
In “Standing Flower,” the largesse of gesture fills the space, its yellow petals like sunshine at the top of our bodies. Strohbeen uses color as greeting, meeting the viewer with expectation, anticipation, and delivery of pleasure.
“Goats Gamboling 1 & 2” give movement and playfulness full reign. Using mesmerizing pattern in black and white, Strohbeen either accents the animals, or both animals and background. But in these two works, there is always color—an abstract background that in its patches becomes quilt-like or sudden floral moments that pop out of the field.
And “Balance,” with its geometrical totem, holds itself up, each point upon each flat line intimating something unexpected. A stem from the ground blooms a flower or is it a house? Are they kites with flowers or ribbons on their tails? Does it build to a mountain in the distance? The tower of triangles, each with its unique pattern, would, in other worlds, succumb to gravity, but in Strohbeen’s world, is perfectly defiant.
Luchsinger’s outdoor landscapes and indoor flower bouquets and cuts zoom in and out to offer the whole still life as well as the fine lines and strokes that give life in these impressionistic paintings. His landscapes do not include figures, but the warmth of color and composition wrap the environment around the viewer just as weather is felt, and as gazing becomes taking in.
“Red Bouquet” dazzles in the rich color and volume of glass which provides white reflection dotted throughout the red sea of background and petals. Zinnias held up and out by their perfect stems, whisp of leaves fanning out around the varied vases, all transparent, to see through to even more red, in different shapes, for eyeshifting.
“Roses in Jar” is a knockout still life closeup. These light pink double roses fluff out into pale layers of shadow, and the light greens with yellow highlights of the foliage give small leaves in accumulation a tenderness. Luchsinger gives us the white of a wooden table painted beneath the jar, showing the panels, placing us within a particular style and season.
“Peony Stem” takes the viewer yet deeper into the detail of cut flowers, of understanding the intricacies of what these fresh living things offer us in often-taken-for-granted tableau. We cut flowers’ lives short by clipping them and arranging them indoors, but Luchsinger’s attention to each and every part of these plants honors the nature we consume. The pink and green hatch marks, diagonal but not crossed, direct the viewer to know the flower in the same manner in which it grew.
In the two works, ”In Reflection” and “Meadow Pond,” the water Luchsinger paints in vases for the flower paintings gets painted in its natural habitat, as original bodies, standing or flowing. The mirroring of landscape in the water loses any pathos of Narcissus and duplicates with augmented affection. And seasonal and geographic changes turn browns to red, orange, and yellow, with green, blue, indigo, and violet all around.
Enjoy this exhibit and looking through the prism of Strohbeen and Luchsinger!