| Sheila Isham is a real throwback—a pre-war, early German Expressionist kind of gal whose heart lies in a peaceful, mystical place. Her recent show at Walter Wickiser Gallery opened with #420 Cosmic Earth—Oasis Series 41, Nature’s Eve, a highly textured painting that reads as a collage with its somewhat abrupt and technically out of context edges here and there. And, maybe not so coincidentally, the exhibit’s two collage works Mythical Escapade CLV and Mythical Escapde CL hang on an adjacent wall. In these, we see another side of the artist as experimentalist, artfully playing with endless possibilities. Here, texture, tone and edge wind sinuously around each other in an all-over composition that remind one of some of the prints that Frank Stella produced with Ken Tyler in the mid-90s. |  |
Cosmic Earth Oasis Series – D. Dominick Lombardi
Sheila Isham is a real throwback—a pre-war, early German Expressionist kind of gal whose heart lies in a peaceful, mystical place. Her recent show at Walter Wickiser Gallery opened with #420 Cosmic Earth—Oasis Series 41, Nature’s Eve, a highly textured painting that reads as a collage with its somewhat abrupt and technically out of context edges here and there. And, maybe not so coincidentally, the exhibit’s two collage works Mythical Escapade CLV and Mythical Escapde CL hang on an adjacent wall. In these, we see another side of the artist as experimentalist, artfully playing with endless possibilities. Here, texture, tone and edge wind sinuously around each other in an all-over composition that remind one of some of the prints that Frank Stella produced with Ken Tyler in the mid-90s.
The two tondo canvases #382 Cosmic Earth—Oasis Series 3, Bestiary Discourse and #380 Cosmic Earth – Oasis 1, Converging on the Oasis, read like a soft focus Emil Nolde and Franz Marc homage. A clever trick with acceptable results. Isham employs the same approach in #383 Cosmic Earth—Oasis Series 4 with far better results. Isham turns a corner here with the ominous head and reeling canine while the oddness of the composition maintains one’s interest.
As noted in the exhibition’s catalog, Isham sees animals and humans, and perhaps even the plant kingdoms, too, as one and the same. This is most apparent in #394 Cosmic Earth—Oasis Series 15 Nature Observes, Guides and Projects. Here, we see a somewhat dreamy, Gauguin-like composition—a slightly less than peaceable kingdom of humans, animals and plants living in symphonic harmony, but with a crowned bat as their conductor. No one seems to mind the arrangement, yet the dark gray coldness of the bat and the chilly stares of some of the inhabitants makes one wonder.
