Interview with Peter Frank

discussing the results of our Art Without Borders on-line competition

Lark: Peter, this is the second Larkgallery Online exhibition that you participated in as a Senior Juror. What difference do you see between the art submitted for the first and the second competition?

Peter: It�s a greater stylistic variety this time, greater competence and more imaginative, distinctive ways of working.

L: I noticed that some of the artists attracted your attention right away, although not all of them became winners. I�d like you to share with us your point of view. For example, about Linda Kunik.

P: In Linda Kunik�s work my eye was attracted to the sense of transformation, dynamic change and metamorphosis.

I liked the approach of Sheryl Walker: because it could be the beginning of a landscape or a constellation of the stars. And although it seems unfinished, it�s very complex and has a dramatic emptiness.

Glenna Jenning�s art is part of her photographic research of social commentary and has this drama and poignancy. She makes keen observation of the rural middle class. She is also a very interesting story teller.

In Ruth Dutoit�s art it�s engaging to see her round or octagonal shapes, symmetrical sometimes like a clock, but yet her art has a lot of interesting asymmetrical elements

L:Did you take into consideration the spiritual content and emaning of Ruth�s art?

P: It�s definitely clear that she had in mind mandala design and that her art is orchestrated cosmologically, but there also a lot of earthlike details and sense of humor.

In the case of Alexander Saibetdinov my attention was attracted to the composition. For example in the painting titled Time there is an oddly empty space with unusual interruptions in the upper left comer. It is a realistic painting with surrealistic moments.

L: What did you think of Alexander�s philosophical approach?

P: His philosophical approach is apparent in this picture. He puts a viewer in a space that situated between dream and reality.

As for Annemarie Rawlinson�s work, well, let�s look at her Guitar It�s a funny, surprising, beautiful and very logical object. It seems like a big guitar giving birth to a little guitar, but it�s more than that. We wonder, Is it the soul, or is it just another aspect of the same guitar?

L:I expected you to be more interested in art techniques, styles and how each artist produced their work than in ideas.

P: My interest is in the relationship of content to form. How technique supports whatever it is the artist wants to do or say.

L:Lets talk about our four winners, beginning with Ali Matin, our Third Place winner:

P: I found his group photographs fascinating, particularly the way he uses light as an inflective, as a path to highlighted elements. I was also taken with the way these figures disappear into the overall pattern of the image, because they are covered with mud or something like that. When Ali Matin gets close up to faces, you can really see them. You can get an understanding that this is a ritual that is meaningful not only to a group of people, but to individuals. When you look at his photographs, you want to know more about these ceremonies. What he seems to be doing is documenting practices of various religions in Iran, and this project is fascinating.

L: Christopher Mercier shared Third Place with Ali Matin

P: I know that Christopher Mercier is an architect. His paintings seem to be rough and exclusively composed and arranged like almost architectural elevations. From one angle they seem to be projections of a wall in a room, from another angle they�re structured like a whole building. From a third angle, they�re very attractive paintings in their own way, they stick out from the wall with their high relief and clashing colors, providing pungent dissonances.

L: It�s not a predictable conversation.

P: Exactly. I like the unusual contours of his work.

L: Do you think that it's the coarseness of his paintings that attracts the viewer�s attention?

P: It�s not only the coarseness, it�s the liveliness. His art is physically heavy, but at the same time moves with remarkable grace.

L: What gives it such grace?

P: The composition, how he arranges his forms, the movement of the lines. He also submitted a very good selection of his artwork.

L: Olga Abramova won Second Place

P: Her depiction of rocks gives us a very close and sensitive look. For example, in her picture Chashethnik you can see erosions or mysterious punctuations that make you wonder about this rock and want to know more about its history.. She masterfully uses color and her realistic approach has very soft edges, because of her use of pastel of course, but also because she exercises a highly atmospheric perception.

L: I like her loving attention to prosaic details and how she is romanticizing her stones.

P: Yes, the stones in Olga�s pictures look hard and at the same time they have a very liquid surface. That gives them sensuality, especially in association with the pair of sandals in the painting Etretat. The warm depiction of these sandals makes you wonder whose sandals they are, what they have seen and where they�ve been I also like the choice of subjects in Olga Abramova�s paintings. When I looked at her website, it was interesting for me to see that she has a series of works about Finno-Ugric myths, motivated by the ancient mythic beliefs of the Finnish people.

L: Amy Longcope won First Place

P: Amy Longcope displayed a strong combination and balance of gesture and structure in her art. She seems to be a forceful and assured abstract painter. It�s hard to tell from on-line images how good her technique is, but I like her color coordination. Also the presence of her work seems to be very strong. It�s like you walk into the room and these paintings right away attract your attention. They are strong and vibrant. The other interesting thing for me about Amy Longcope�s works is their organization around a high horizon line, but I do not get a feeling that they are landscapes. Due to her calligraphic and painterly gestures, her use of different shapes blobs and drips, it doesn�t feel like a landscape space. It is more schematic and arranges itself on a plane, toward a clearance in a coherent fashion.

L: In addition to painting techniques, Amy seems to layer a lot with collage

P: Yes, the texture of her surfaces is sophisticated and the layering is among the strongest aspects of her work.