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| "In the Quiet Moment" (2021) by Alice Dalton Brown on display at her retrospective "Alice Dalton Brown, Where the Light Breathes" at My Art Museum in Gangnam, Seoul / Courtesy of My Art Museum |
By Park Han-sol
Beyond the fluttering curtains, water ripples shimmer as the waves lap the shore. The endless stretch of pastel blue captured in American realist painter Alice Dalton Brown's latest work, "In the Quiet Moment," is a welcome distraction from the reality wrought by the pandemic and everyday worries.
"In my painting, I put my viewers closer to the world that I see so they can hear and feel the little creatures, the lapping water, the light, the movement (and the) atmosphere of this place," she said, greeting viewers during the Interpark TV's livestreamed interview at My Art Museum in Gangnam, Seoul, where her first overseas retrospective of 80 paintings and studies spanning over five decades is held.
The 82-year-old artist is best known for her delicate brushstrokes that summon the scenery of harmonious contrast between the natural, disordered elements and its human-made, controlled counterparts.
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| Painter Alice Dalton Brown / Courtesy of My Art Museum |
Since 1970, when she moved to New York City with her family, she established her hyper-realistic style with imaginative visual touches. From painting a series of shadows cast on the exteriors of barns and silos in the 1970s, she shifted her perspective over the next two decades to porches, gates and windows of the Victorian style houses in the suburb ― the threshold that bridges the exterior and interior of the building.
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| "Dogwood Reflected" (2006) by Alice Dalton Brown / Courtesy of My Art Museum |
Dalton Brown then turned her attention to the bouncing blue waves and their brilliance in the summer afternoon glimpsed from inside the house by the windowsill, after being moved by the view she saw in her friend's house in 1995. Thus, her signature "Summer Breeze" series, another turning point of her artistic career, was born.
"Long Golden Day" (2000), where the painter combined the visual motif of the window of her sister's house with the scenery of Cayuga Lake in New York, would be a familiar piece to the Korean audience as it appeared in popular drama series including "Stranger" (2017), "Misty" (2018) and "The World of the Married" (2020).
The exhibition also showcases her three latest works commissioned by My Art Museum: "In the Quiet Moment," "Expectation" and "Lifting Light." Inside the gallery, the calming sound of rolling waves coming from the speakers and headphones will help immerse the viewers into her shimmering summer landscape.
"I was very surprised and pleased to be invited to have this exhibition. The curators … were able to (gather) paintings that I haven't seen in 20, 30, even 40 years. It's a moving experience for me to see these paintings again," the artist said.
"Alice Dalton Brown, Where the Light Breathes" runs through Oct. 24 at My Art Museum.
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| Installation view of the exhibition "Alice Dalton Brown, Where the Light Breathes" / Courtesy of My Art Museum |
