September 2003
Liquid Landscapes
Interview with artist Carolanna Parlato by curator Janet
Goleas on the occasion of Parlato's 2003 exhibition at the
JG:
To begin, let's talk about your working method. How do your paintings begin?
CP:
I'm interested in the complexity of the natural world, bio-morphic form and the
swirling, fluid nature of things. The works are created through a
semi-controlled approach. I drip, puddle and pour liquid paint and then
physically move the entire canvas. Amorphous shapes mutate, dilate and expand,
stretch and congeal on the surface.
JG:
The results reveal little or no evidence of the artist's hand, or of brushwork.
Can you discuss this?
CP: When a painting is poured, it uses a force of nature in a way that a
brushstroke cannot. I find myself involved in an experience of natural flow
similar to the movement of water, fire or wind.
JG: You bring up what to me is one of the central issues in your work -- the
force of nature. Your painting process is related to the laws of nature, and on
some level your imagery, though thoroughly abstract, provokes associations to
landscape and to the natural world. Yet the paintings also address concepts of
artifice and pop culture. This schism fascinates me, and seems to be the deep
psychology within these works.
CP: Yes, the paintings have an eccentric, almost humorous undercurrent. I am
influenced by Saturday morning cartoons and colors found in the world around
me. I'll use colors noticed on everything from shampoo bottles to hues from a
child's dress.
JG: I like those descriptions -- your colors do read as extremely specific.
Would you say the effect of color is the driving force in your work?
CP: Actually yes, my work is motivated by color. I am constantly collecting
objects or cutting out colors from ads to create paper samples. I'm a true
believer in the power of visual stimulation. I often juxtapose neutral or
natural colors with synthetic, eye-popping ones. It's more interesting to mix
silly with serious, nonsense and sense. This tug-of-war or schism you mentioned
earlier is more compelling and may not be explained rationally.
JG: Viewers often mention visual mapping or aerial views when discussing your
paintings. Barry Schwabsky talked about your Perfume River series in relation
to "topographical maps" as well as Chinese landscape painting and
other imagery related to the landscape. Are you drawn to the traditions of
landscape painting? Is this the gestalt of the paintings, is it incidental, or
do you feel you're working directly within this tradition?
CP: I don't think of abstraction as a representation of the "unreal".
What is interesting about abstraction is that it can be a little of both --real
and unreal. In 1999, when I began the Perfume River series, I was
thinking about our techno-centric world, global warming, the perversions of
genetic engineering and all the rest. At the time, the paintings did resemble
aerial views or toxic topographies, as I called them. In his essay, Barry
remarks on the paradoxical space in my work and unreality of the illusory
effects I achieve through totally abstract means. I do feel closer to Chinese
or non-western landscape painting. I love the way there can be several kinds of
space in the same painting, concepts I applied in the second group of
JG: Yes, your recent paintings have a very physical, extremely material quality
and at the same time they seem to represent a moment that is fleeting -- as if
they have captured the briefest glimpse of a natural event. Their plastic,
elastic character supports these two notions.
CP: In Melt, I thinned the paint with a variety of airbrush mediums in
order to create dispersions. I was investigating the way the blob dispersions
spread and bounced up against each other -- the irregular; fractal edge of
these cells interested me. Several years before I made this series I call Dot-Blob,
my work was included in a group exhibition, "Strange Attractors: The
Spectacle of Chaos"(1988). I exhibited large India ink watercolors in that
exhibition. I met scientists and other artists interested in chaos science.
There was much discussion, which inspired me to experiment with paint, its
viscosity, its ability to attract and repel, its chemistry. Books on chaos
theory, scientific images of fluid flow, topographic maps, weather charts, and
aerial photos -- fueled my explorations of the liquidity of paint. Eventually,
I began to tilt the canvas. The act of actually maneuvering the canvas added a
spatial dimension that created the illusion of landscape. I moved from 'micro'
to "macro". This transition is most visible in the painting Perfume
River I of 1999.
JG: How much control do you --can you -- exert over the movement of the paint?
Conceptually do you utilize 'the accident" in your work?
CP: My method falls somewhere between chance and control. Take my recent
painting, Floating Landscape, from 2003. The blue background is a smooth,
liquid skin made from a combination of mediums and pigment. Tilting the canvas
produces 'unexpected" effects which I count on and often can predict. The
floating puddles of gray are applied on to the ground as separate components --
I pour them on a resistant surface and then carefully peel them off. I play
around with these elements, layering them until I'm happy with the overall
compositions. In this way the newer work is more controlled, but I'm also happy
to relinquish control.
JG: How does combining these peel paint elements with the poured surfaces alter
the imagery? It's a different thought process -- one that uses placement and
orientation. It's similar to collage.
CP: Yes, it is collage -- a collage of painted "stickers". My daughter
has an incredible sticker collection. I find her arrangements of them in the
most unusual places. These elements remind me of them. Each 'sticker"
element is made in the same way I poured the earlier paintings, but on a much
smaller scale. By collaging the stickers I add composition and surface play to
my process. The forms in the sticker paintings appear to float above the
background moving in and out of space and playing with depth and scale. While
the surface is still flat and opaque, the final imagery has more depth. This
floating feeling is what I'm after?
JG: Let's talk about your background -- do you remember the first time a work
of art impacted you?
CP: Well, when I was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, I spent a
great deal of time in the local museums. What were popular then were
performance art, sculpture, photography, and video. As a painter I felt like a
fish out of water. At the old SF MOMA, I visited the Clyfford Still gallery
often. Sitting in that room with those immense works was quite an inspiration.
His intense color, jagged edges and powerful gestures were mesmerizing to me.
The shapes and colors brought to mind lightning or flames, even landslides. I
guess his work is the first painting that really influenced me. At that time, I
made a series of layered torn paper collages and acrylic paintings that had
broken pieces of glass stuck on the surface. Several years later I visited D.C.
where I saw the work of Morris Louis and other color field painters like Helen
Frankenthaler. My working process is probably most like Louis's. He manipulated
unstretched canvas and let paint flow into the folds and stain its surface.
Louis would pour stripes of paint downward and then turn the paintings upside
down so the drips would be at the top.
JG: It's interesting that you mention Clyfford Still, someone who had a unique
impact on
CP: The elongated, stretched out forms in both Still and El Greco evoke
tremendous emotion. Art that can do that inspires me. I return to these early
art influences; I admire Still's and Louis's integrity as well as their work. I
look back at my early investigations in the fluidity of paint, but with a fresh
eye, taking what worked and making it new. As I said earlier, I do respond to
my immediate environment -- colors noticed in the street or in the sky, a
reflection of sunlight on chrome, sci-fi color found in comics. My interest in
studying and researching books, which connect art and science, is constant. I
collect images of maps and aerial views and friends sometimes send me
interesting photos they come across. Sometimes my titles are taken from popular
songs. Sea of Green and
Janet Goleas is curator of the Permanent Collection of the