Artist Shows Off Her ‘New Works on Paper’
By Sara Busse
WANT TO GO? Robin McClintock: New Works on Paper WHERE: Callen McJunkin Gallery, in the loft at 219 Hale St., Charleston, above Stray Dog Antiques WHEN: Sept. 5 through Oct. 4 HOURS: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment. CONTACT: (304) 342- 5647
History Repeats Itself, Robin McClintock, 2008, watercolor, graphite, wax and coal ash on rag paper, 48 by 70 inches.
Chinaquake, Robin McClintock, 2008, watercolor, graphite, wax and coal ash on rag paper, 48 by 68 inches.
There’s a bit of Lower Manhattan, China and Tucker County in each of Robin McClintock’s works. One might need a map to traverse the influences on her art, and she provides those, as well.
McClintock’s latest works will be shown, starting Friday, at Callen McJunkin Gallery in an exhibit called “New Works on Paper.” From 9/11 to Asian porcelain vessels to the handmade quilts of the Mountain State, the artist combines her journeys into large canvasses that will grace her first solo show with McJunkin.
The New York influence is seen in earlier works, especially “The Thereness of Here Was Gone,” a gridlike piece that evokes sights seen in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Although she had moved to a rural farm within the Monongahela National Forest in Tucker County by the time the Twin Towers fell, she used the event in many works.
A Mountainmade Foundation Travel Grant allowed her to visit China through the Jingdezhen University/WVU Partnership program in 2006. There she saw the shapes of vases as an iconic tribute to the Chinese people, and the large works in the McJunkin Gallery show reflect that image in the huge works “History Repeats Itself” and “Chinaquake.”
“The area where we were based was the porcelain capital of the world, the only place where they mine kaolin,” McClintock said. Kaolin is a highly desirable clay derived from the mineral kaolinite. “I’ve always been interested in vessels, ceramics and their surfaces, so the experience in China was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,” she said.
The pieces are roughly 4 feet by 6 feet, and are done in watercolor, graphite, wax and coal ash on rag paper. The use of coal ash comes from her China trip, “where they use coal to power everything,” and from her early time in West Virginia.
“I had a studio in an old elementary school in Parsons, and they used to use coal to heat the place,” McClintock said. “I would go down to the old coal furnace and collect the ash.”
McClintock and her husband, Michael, a sculptor and whitewater enthusiast, moved to Tucker County “because my husband is a Class V boater, and had been coming to this area for years,” she explained. “We decided it was time to leave New York, and we found everything we ever wanted” in West Virginia.
The maplike images referred to in McClintock’s work come from a fascination with cartography and its physical portrayal of space. Yet she acknowledges she doesn’t have a direction in mind when she begins a piece.
“When I start my work, I don’t necessarily have a preconceived plan of what I’m doing. I start working, and I get into trouble and get out of it, and go into a different direction,” McClintock said.
She started as a printmaker, and the subtraction process used in that medium comes into play in her current art. “I find light in the darkness through drawing with an eraser,” she added.
“Chinaquake,” in which the graphic lines of McClintock’s beloved Asian vessels are skewed and broken, was painted this year following the earthquake in China. McClintock uses another emotional subject, the deaths of both her father and father-in-law within the past two years, in “The What If Trail.”
“I spent a lot of time in hospitals watching monitors, and that influenced that painting,” which has a graphlike feel to the top of the canvas. Yet she says her art is not a totally emotional outlet.
“It’s an intellectual discipline for me, and if things are going right, some of the noise gets less, some of the noise gets louder,” McClintock said. “My art is in finding the balance.”
Reach Sara Busse at sara.busse@wvgazette.com or 348-1249.
Originally published by Staff writer.
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