Pulse and Rhythm
New Works by Tamar Kander
June 6 - 30, 2008
By Susan McGarry
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake.
Wallace Stevens
For her second solo exhibition at Joyce Robins Gallery, Tamar Kander synthesizes reality and the imagination in paintings that explore the ebb and flow of life.
“My work is constantly evolving, not in a linear way, but more like a spiral at the foundation of which is my individual thumbprint,” Kander says. “I am still intrigued with translating my experiences into evocative universal forms or symbols by using color, tone, texture and markings, but recent influences include taking up dance again and endeavoring to interpret the feelings and mood of movement into my work. We also relocated to a home on a lake. Water is now a part of my daily experience, creeping into my work, helping the flow and clarifying my vision.”
Kander provokes that flow with a variety of materials that at first glance seem to resist manipulation. Building up her canvases using everything from powdered gesso, cold wax, dry-wall compound, cement, acrylic binders and marble dust, she uses industrial implements to apply, scrape and texture the surfaces, which she also incises, etches or marks using inks, graphite and oil sticks.
Most often Kander’s journey on canvas begins with personal notes or items. “Lately I’ve been using maps and some bits of fabric that I have printed myself as part of the ground with which I prepare my canvas,” she explains. “I have literally collaged onto canvas the maps I used to chart my travels across this country, including one that I incorporated into a painting for this exhibition titled Indirect Route, which measures 40 by 80 inches. The maps are only evident if you look really hard. Most importantly, however, I know they are there.”
According to Joyce Robins, collectors are drawn to Kander’s paintings because of the hands-on creative process so apparent on the surfaces. “The paintings have an extraordinary presence from across the room,” she says, “but people are equally compelled to examine and touch them. In many ways, Tamar’s mixed-media technique has a tactile sensuality that is akin to sculpture.”
Kander’s journeys on canvas are a microcosm of the many locations across the world where she has absorbed environments and cultures. Her life map begins with her birth in Israel, followed by sojourns in South Africa, Italy, England, and New York. For the past twenty years, she has lived in southern Indiana with her husband, a ceramist and, as she describes it, a menagerie of animals. “There is a grid or web of lines in my life and art,” she concludes, “but it only peeks through here and there.”
Joyce Robins Gallery 201 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501