Artist, Scholar, Curator

Once in a while artist Constance “Connie” Lowe takes a break from her own work to assume the curatorial role. Such was the case recently when she agreed to serve as curator for Magnetic Fields, a show opening March 10 as the Southwest School of Art’s contribution to Contemporary Art Month. It started with a suggestion to exhibit the paintings of Minneapolis-based, German-born artist Barbara Kreft.

“I thought they should be seen down here,” says Lowe, who is also a professor at UTSA. “We need to see more paintings in San Antonio, especially by people from elsewhere. But Paula (Owen, SSA’s president) said, ‘Why don’t you curate a group exhibition?’ So I had to find other artists whose work would be compatible with Barbara’s.”

The result is the current show that, besides Kreft, features San Antonian Richard Martinez, Dallasite Kim Cadmus Owens and Austinite Dan Sutherland. They represent two distinct approaches, says Lowe. While Kreft and Martinez gravitate toward orderly abstract patterns and an emphasis on surface, in the paintings of the other two, there are many recognizable elements intersecting with abstract shapes, as well as a sense of deep and layered space. “Painters set painting problems for themselves to investigate,” explains the professor. For instance, Owens is interested in exploring how to “integrate often overlooked, on-the-fringe industrial spaces with elements that show the painter’s mind at work.” Sutherland, on the other hand, begins with still life or landscape images and then proceeds to apply his “abstract interruptions and interventions.”

Since we are having this conversation in January, Lowe has brought her computer to the Ruiz-Healy Gallery, which markets her own work, to show images of the four artists’ paintings. As we look at the pictures, I am most struck by Sutherland’s “interventions.” With just a hint of what may have served as a seed of inspiration, his paintings literally compel the viewer — at least this viewer — to take a closer look at his imaginatively surrealistic details, often rendered in bursts of riotous shapes and colors. For instance, the stunning oil (on aluminum base) titled Mortal Elemental features what appears to be a human skull in the process of decomposing into dozens of vivid elements that tumble over each other and eventually spread away into wing-reminiscent, multicolored fields. The juxtaposition of death and beauty, or perhaps death and renewal, though slightly disturbing, is also visually and emotionally satisfying.

In sharp contrast, Martinez’s shaped-format canvases are large, cool and calm. They keep their own counsel, simply offering their mostly monochromatic faces to the viewer to admire for their subtle qualities. Analogous differences also exist between Kreft and Owens.

The way Lowe chose the artists for Magnetic Fields reflects her scholarly interests in contemporary paintings, says SSA’s Paula Owen: “Curators have to be scholars because they can’t just assemble pieces that represent their personal taste. There has to be a theoretical rationale for the exhibit, and that rationale comes from her research as a scholar. I greatly admire Connie as an intellectual.”