Boston Globe art critic, Cate McQuaid, reviews Organica show. . .
Alicia Tormey makes pictures. Wild, intoxicating pictures with jewel tones, spatial complexity, abstract passages, and giddy motion, which are now on view at Chase Young Gallery. Looking at them is a less contemplative process than looking at work by Lipsky and Tollens. Likewise, they are rewarding in different ways.
If we were looking through binoculars, these ribbons would be hairs in a lens. They’re that close, and they make the space of this landscape appear impossibly grand. With a technique that leans toward gorgeous, it’s easy to go too far. Most of the time, Tormey’s tones, lines, and her attention to detail work to her favor.
Read her article below...
Wild, Dreamy Images
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| At Chase Young Gallery, Alicia Tormey’s “Gaudium.” |
What Tormey has in common with those two painters is a commitment to technique. She mixes beeswax, ink, and shellac, and builds her images, in part, with a blowtorch. The ink, it appears, makes the picture; layers of wax add the illusion of distance. The heated shellac bubbles and threads, creating an organic overlay that crawls over the surface, and frames the color beneath like a stained glass window.
The artist’s floral pieces, such as “Sublimus” and “Gaudium,”are hardly still lifes. In these fierce blooms, delicate strands and wisps of jewel-like color streak like silk in the wind. They’re fiery — if fire were purple, green, or gold — and seem held together by those delicate bubbles caused by the blowtorch.
Those flowers come at you, all along the surface. Tormey’s landscapes recede dreamily into soft hazes. “Kaleidoscope” depicts a river delta fading into a pearlescent distance. The deep brown web of shellac over pale green delineates the land. Three slender ribbons in the foreground bring us right to the surface.
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| Alicia Tormey’s “Kaleidoscope.” |
ALICIA TORMEY: Organica
At: Chase Young Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave., through April 30. 617-859-7222
Published in the Boston Globe on April 8th, 2015
Here's a link to the full article: Boston Globe
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