On March 1, HOWL Gallery/Tattoo in the River District will welcome OPT abstract artist Veron Ennis to the gallery for a solo exhibition. On display will be work from her popular, highly-acclaimed OPT Exhibition! at the Mercato in Naples, as well as the last seven works from her seminal Paper Milk series of work.
“In the early stages of my career, I was in search of an identifiable, consistent style,” Ennis relates. “I had to go through different approaches to find out what I was looking for, but I arrived there three years ago.” Paper Milk was Ennis’ jumping off point. The series was white, clean, and fresh, presented on free-hanging paper suspended from above by white string attached to the upper corners of each artwork by miniature white clothespins.
Veron is also bringing to HOWL a number of pieces from her current body of work, Transference. In these new tightly-structured abstracts, Ennis strives to transfer to her viewers elated feelings of love and joy in a non-objective manner.
“The transference of information during the creative process from artist to painting, and then from painting to viewer when the work is completed, is the reason why art can transcend time and why abstract painting has the ability to communicate," the artist explains. "Transferring specifically positive information through the means of creating a non-objective painting is a graceful way to connect with people and is freeing and enlightening for the artist."
Evolving out of her intervening Chroma Tone period, the paintings and cubes that comprise Transference convey a gentle and calm message, created through the artist and medium, and open to a relaxed and perceptive interpretation. "Positive artwork is no less serious than work of any other nature, in fact, it is essential,” Ennis explains.
From a theoretical perspective, Transference operates from the premise that art has a measurable effect on people. Regrettably, that impact has been largely negative for too many years.
“For decades, the art market has been saturated with works that portray negative positions on life and the world around us,” Veron writes in the December 2012 edition of Gulfshore Life. “Intriguing and arresting as they are, the sheer volume of such pieces compels me to ask, ‘How much negativity can the art world handle?’”
Ennis believes that art lovers have reached their saturation point, coming to the sudden realization that they need to prevent dark, dreary and dreadful imagery from penetrating their home and office spaces and, derivatively, their psyches and souls. Believing that the feelings she conveys in her abstract compositions are transferred to the people who view her work, Ennis feels it is incumbent upon her to strictly regulate the emotions she experiences leading up to and during the creative process.
“I won’t paint while I’m mad, sad or tired because that could be transferred to the viewer.”
While her new artistic approach requires her to exercise vigilance over her emotional state, Veron willingly yields large segments of the creative process to serendipity, happenstance and pure chance. It’s a technique called aleatoricism, and it acknowledges and embraces the role of fate, the laws of physics and the continuum of perpetual chaos in the creation of works of art. By collaborating with the forces that govern the universe, aleatoric artists like Ennis find they are able to transcend the limitations of the mind and body to reach previously unattainable artistic plateaus.
You can take in works from both Paper Milk and Transference at HOWL Gallery during the month of March. The exhibit will open on Friday, March 1, with a 6-10 p.m. reception that coincides with Art Walk. The exhibition will remain on view through March 28, 2013.
HOWL Gallery/Tattoo is Fort Myers' premier art and tattoo studio. For more information about the exhibit or HOWL Gallery, please visit www.howlgallery.com or telephone 239-332-0161.
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