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If the self-help world could adopt an artist, Oakland painter Squeak Carnwath would be it. Maybe because her paintings generously offer us a “guilt-free zone” that's comfier to linger in than the benches at the Oakland Museum of Art. Like maps with rest stops, the paintings suggest not destinations exactly, but routes through life’s big, anxiety-inducing questions. Even their titles hope for the best, as in Trying Simply to Be Happy, In Pursuit of Happiness, Real and True and The Whole Truth. But don’t take my word for it. Carnwath herself reveals the secrets of her paintings in the video at the end of the exhibit. It’s a show where you can start at the end, with answers that guide you back through the questions.
Carnwath believes that paint is skin. Her shabby-chic canvases bear the scars, bruises and veins that mimic the imperfections of an aging human life. She communicates through personal ideograms and private symbols culled over a lifetime of searching. Record albums (Side One ), whose black discs mean death in her visual language, sit alongside good luck icons (Good Luck ), bunnies (Long Happy Life) and copious text (Right Now ), capturing the onslaught of life.
Maybe gravity naturally occurs to a 62-year-old painter whose interprets life with art. You intuitively get that her paintings are meant to reveal, not to hide or trick the viewer with intellectual traps. Most remarkable is how we recognize ourselves in them, how they echo our inner voices, as if the paintings were mirrors. Finally, her paintings ask each of us about ourselves: If I were the painter of my life, what symbols would define me? Hidden in our everyday objects, these metaphors follow us through our lives. In seeking them, we must remember one thing. Though we may think we choose our symbols, it's more likely that our symbols choose us.
For more information, contact Sho Sho Smith at whimsicaltaxidermy@gmail.com.
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