One of the deep and lasting pleasures of a really good painting is that it defies easy classification—with the result that the observing mind is never allowed to slip back into passivity, but remains constantly alert, active, suspended between possible ways of “understanding” it. And understanding is what the mind likes best to do.
So it is with the paintings of Bobbie Moline-Kramer. Their seductive images and surfaces grab the eye immediately, and the mind says: “Portrait.” It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But wait. There’s something distinctly unsettling here. First, the scale—the very large or the very small (although, take note: in the small paintings the faces are, surprisingly, actually life size.) Then the context. Or rather, its absence—aside from the square frame of the picture itself. Thanks to the subtle operation of the brushwork, these faces merge imperceptibly into the dark background that surrounds them. No hint of clothing, no background detail that could help us situate or define the particularities of the subject’s life outside the frame.
Provoked in this way, the mind is primed to ask its questions. If it was led to see a portrait, what kind of expectations did it bring? Certainly, in a traditional portrait we look for “likeness”—a more or less faithful representation of how a person looks. Traditionally, too, a portrait is the visual equivalent of a character in a play: without perhaps even being aware of it, the mind picks up all kinds of information about the history, background, style, and social standing of a person. Traditional portraiture is concerned with defining the individuality of its subject. Not to mention flattering the individual ego it portrays!
So here’s the rub: a second glance at Moline-Kramer’s paintings is enough to make it clear that she skirts past all this. It’s not about likeness, and certainly not about flattering anyone’s ego. On the contrary, her pictures have an eerie, discomforting affect. We may find “character” there—indeed, we do: that’s one of the interesting subtexts of the work. But it is indisputably subordinated to the capture of something more abstract, more fleeting, and yet more universal: the ever-shifting, ever complex life of feelings.
We do tend to forget, or all too often unconsciously repress our emotions, but they are never for a single moment absent from our lives. In drawing our attention to them so insistently, the artist leaves us no room for the comfort of denial. In her paintings we find ourselves confronted by them, as she says, “face to face.” Or even, perhaps, as the current idiom has it, “in your face”, for we gaze into these images and we know that they are us.
Her subjects are not, then, some other “individual” whose suffering, pain, or anger, grief or joy we might observe at a respectable distance, but ourselves. Because they bypass individuality, these paintings open themselves to—no, really demand—our projection. In them, we are called upon to identify our own anger and our grief, our joy and resignation; and to realize that emotions rarely come unalloyed. Joy may be tinged with sorrow, pain with anger, and so on: Moline-Kramer reminds us that the complexity of human emotions is subtle, and virtually infinite.
To achieve her effects, Moline-Kramer first documents her subjects with a camera, registering the range of their emotions as they express them. From literally hundreds of images, she selects virtually at random—often inviting friends or strangers to make the selection for her. To make things harder, she eschews the simple rendering of a single image, but combines two or more selected images as she “translates” them into paintings. Then she brings her remarkable technical skills to bear, rendering these “in-sights” meticulously in oil on board, creating those seductive surfaces that initially grab the eye and retain its attention.
Explore the impeccable craftsmanship of these surfaces keenly, and you’ll be rewarded by the discovery of details that, appropriately, mime that creative tension between the eye’s expectation and what it actually sees: the strategic juxtaposition of a warm color with a cool one, the play of complementary linear rhythms and forms. Moline-Kramer keeps her sharp visual intelligence to the fore as she works, and requires the same from her observer. More important, though, we recognize that the process of painting involves her own act of projection, the generous revelation of the depths of her own emotional experience through the creative act. What the artist offers us, as artists do, is the essence of her humanity; what she asks of us in return is the recognition—and deepening—of our own humanity in response to hers.
-Peter Clothier
So it is with the paintings of Bobbie Moline-Kramer. Their seductive images and surfaces grab the eye immediately, and the mind says: “Portrait.” It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But wait. There’s something distinctly unsettling here. First, the scale—the very large or the very small (although, take note: in the small paintings the faces are, surprisingly, actually life size.) Then the context. Or rather, its absence—aside from the square frame of the picture itself. Thanks to the subtle operation of the brushwork, these faces merge imperceptibly into the dark background that surrounds them. No hint of clothing, no background detail that could help us situate or define the particularities of the subject’s life outside the frame.
Provoked in this way, the mind is primed to ask its questions. If it was led to see a portrait, what kind of expectations did it bring? Certainly, in a traditional portrait we look for “likeness”—a more or less faithful representation of how a person looks. Traditionally, too, a portrait is the visual equivalent of a character in a play: without perhaps even being aware of it, the mind picks up all kinds of information about the history, background, style, and social standing of a person. Traditional portraiture is concerned with defining the individuality of its subject. Not to mention flattering the individual ego it portrays!
So here’s the rub: a second glance at Moline-Kramer’s paintings is enough to make it clear that she skirts past all this. It’s not about likeness, and certainly not about flattering anyone’s ego. On the contrary, her pictures have an eerie, discomforting affect. We may find “character” there—indeed, we do: that’s one of the interesting subtexts of the work. But it is indisputably subordinated to the capture of something more abstract, more fleeting, and yet more universal: the ever-shifting, ever complex life of feelings.
We do tend to forget, or all too often unconsciously repress our emotions, but they are never for a single moment absent from our lives. In drawing our attention to them so insistently, the artist leaves us no room for the comfort of denial. In her paintings we find ourselves confronted by them, as she says, “face to face.” Or even, perhaps, as the current idiom has it, “in your face”, for we gaze into these images and we know that they are us.
Her subjects are not, then, some other “individual” whose suffering, pain, or anger, grief or joy we might observe at a respectable distance, but ourselves. Because they bypass individuality, these paintings open themselves to—no, really demand—our projection. In them, we are called upon to identify our own anger and our grief, our joy and resignation; and to realize that emotions rarely come unalloyed. Joy may be tinged with sorrow, pain with anger, and so on: Moline-Kramer reminds us that the complexity of human emotions is subtle, and virtually infinite.
To achieve her effects, Moline-Kramer first documents her subjects with a camera, registering the range of their emotions as they express them. From literally hundreds of images, she selects virtually at random—often inviting friends or strangers to make the selection for her. To make things harder, she eschews the simple rendering of a single image, but combines two or more selected images as she “translates” them into paintings. Then she brings her remarkable technical skills to bear, rendering these “in-sights” meticulously in oil on board, creating those seductive surfaces that initially grab the eye and retain its attention.
Explore the impeccable craftsmanship of these surfaces keenly, and you’ll be rewarded by the discovery of details that, appropriately, mime that creative tension between the eye’s expectation and what it actually sees: the strategic juxtaposition of a warm color with a cool one, the play of complementary linear rhythms and forms. Moline-Kramer keeps her sharp visual intelligence to the fore as she works, and requires the same from her observer. More important, though, we recognize that the process of painting involves her own act of projection, the generous revelation of the depths of her own emotional experience through the creative act. What the artist offers us, as artists do, is the essence of her humanity; what she asks of us in return is the recognition—and deepening—of our own humanity in response to hers.
-Peter Clothier