Article by John Seed, renowned art writer and author of ‘Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World’ and ‘More Disruption: Representational Art in Flux.’
During the challenging early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Michele Giulvezan-Tanner almost gave up on her art. Michele had been primarily a figurative painter for many decades, but having models in the studio felt a little too unsafe at the time. “It was devastating,” she recalls, “I stopped working with models and I decided I could either quit or move entirely toward abstraction.” She chose abstraction. As it turns out, Giulvezan-Tanner had been moving towards abstraction all her artistic life.
Giulvezan-Tanner took her first painting class at the age of 19, but with a teacher who left her uninspired. Then, when she took a community college class in her early 30s, her instructor was John Ekstrom, a dedicated painter who became a lifelong mentor and friend. Ekstrom made a lasting impression that lingered even as Giulvezan-Tanner experimented with installation, collage, and Expressionist paintings while doing her graduate work at the University of Illinois. As she moved through all of these phases, there was one constant. “There was always a thread of figuration in what I was doing,” Giulvezan-Tanner explains, “and it slowly led towards my current work.”
Since moving to California 25 years ago, Giulvezan-Tanner has been letting her art evolve and take its course. About 15 years ago, the figures in her paintings began to show signs of abstraction. Passages of abstract brushwork appeared inside the figures even as they remained recognizably human. Inspired by contemporary painters who break down the figure, including Ann Gale and Alex Kanevsky, Giulvezan-Tanner tried to find her own way of exploring and abstracting the human form. “I love looking for the figure in the painting,” she explains. “I enjoy how the eyes of the viewer search the painting for recognizable form.”
Giulvezan-Tanner’s semi-abstract figure paintings were activated by the shared visual experiences of the artist and her viewers. For example, in the painting “Lost,” which depicts a nude figure typing at a computer keyboard, the figure and her setting share broadly applied patches of color that vary in tone. For that reason, discerning the figure takes a certain effort. The artist seems to be indicating that her efforts to depict the figure involve a multi-faceted process of seeing, remembering, and experimenting. This process, which derives from her curiosity, is something that opens the door to responsive seeing by those who encounter the finished painting.
Once COVID forced the issue, Giulvezan-Tanner initially found working abstractly unsatisfying. She soon realized that even with abstraction she needed the forms on her canvas to have some kind of “thingness” that suggested form and space. She felt strongly that making a painting that she or her viewers could enter visually required it to have all the traditional elements of art. Giulvezan-Tanner soon found that she enjoyed letting her viewers find hints of subject matter in paintings. For example, “Wild Horses” was painted with no intention of any specific subject matter, but she was happy to add the title after a friend discerned the forms of horses. Giulvezan-Tanner enjoys how the viewer finds a subject matter in the painting which is derived from the viewer’s personal psychology or history. Other new abstract paintings have forms that suggest places, landscapes, and interiors.
Now well into the process of painting abstractly, Giulvezan-Tanner loves what she is doing, and so do many of her supportive friends and collectors. She feels she has “gotten the rhythm,” and fresh new paintings are constantly appearing. “At first, there were a few people who wondered if I had lost my mind,” Giulvezan-Tanner comments, “but abstraction now feels like what I have been moving toward my whole career.”
Come celebrate Michele Giulvezan-Tanner’s exploration of abstraction at her show, “Our Life is What Our Thoughts Make It.” The opening reception is on June 7th from 5-8pm at the R. Blitzer Gallery, 2801 Mission Street Ext., Santa Cruz, CA. The exhibition runs through July. Don’t miss this chance to see her captivating new works. We hope to see you there!
R. Blitzer Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday 1pm-4pm or by appointment.
Michele Giulvezan-Tanner
https://www.instagram.com/giulvezantanner/
https://giulvezan.com/
