THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611050505
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 176 lines
AS A YOUNGSTER in Richmond in the 1920s, artist Nell Blaine was operated on for crossed eyes and given glasses for astigmatism. From then on, seeing clearly was her ecstasy.
She gazed wondrously at the plate-sized dahlias in her father's garden, and at the light-soaked seashore by her family's cabin. Like a visual sponge, she embraced the full spectrum of color in her world.
It was the first of several physical challenges the artist would endure, then transcend. In 1959, at age 37, she contracted bulbar-spinal polio, and recently experienced a recurrence. Cancer struck in the last two years. She had a polio-related tracheotomy this summer; hospitalized since June, she also is being treated for pneumonia. Blaine's longtime companion, Carolyn Harris, said the 74-year-old artist expects to go home in two to three weeks.
Through it all, that joy in looking has remained in her paintings, and is very present in her retrospective on view at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, part of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. The exhibit spans 1955 to 1995 and coincides with the latest of Blaine's many honors: on Thursday, she will receive the college's Cheek Award for Outstanding Presentation of the Arts.
``I've been aware of Nell Blaine since the time I first came to Virginia, and even before that,'' said Muriel Christison, who curated the show. ``She is someone who has never gone out of the picture, if you keep up with contemporary American art.''
Christison, whose lengthy art background includes being associate director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond from 1948 to 1961, called Blaine ``one of a very select group of Virginia artists who during the 20th century have attracted international attention, and who have maintained a long career of accomplishment and recognition. There has always been interest in her work, and she has always been represented by one of the substantial dealers in New York.''
As familiar as Christison was with Blaine's work, she was not aware that the artist was left paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair from 1959. ``I didn't realize the extent of her handicap at all,'' she said, somewhat amazed, ``until I undertook this project.''
Looking at her paintings, even the most trained eye might never guess what Blaine has endured.
The hallmark of her art is a vivid, light-filled palette, rhythmic strokes and a generally upbeat mood. That was true in the 1950s, when she first became excited about capturing natural light - but even more so after her bout with polio, when this right-handed artist had to train herself to paint left-handed.
``If you look at her paintings, they are very bright, ebullient paintings, with a lot of life and light,'' said Martica Sawin, an art historian and critic who has known the painter since the late 1950s, and who has written her biography. Since Blaine is unable to come to Williamsburg, Sawin will accept her award, then give a slide lecture on her work.
``Her paintings seem to take great pleasure in the landscape, in flowers, in whatever it is she is painting,'' Sawin said. ``They're wonderfully positive paintings. Nothing of her own suffering or handicap can be seen in them.
``Perhaps, in a way, they're an attempt to triumph over all that - and not let it get her down.''
The exhibit opens with works from the 1950s. Her interest in abstraction can be seen in the pared-down way she conveys mountains, merry-go-rounds and giant arched windows looking out onto a world of beauty and light.
Then came the 1959 trip to Mykonos, a Greek island, where polio first knocked the breath out of her. She was already somewhat famous, a member in good standing of the Second Generation of the Abstract Expressionist school. Life magazine had featured her in 1957 as one of five significant women artists.
``She was thought of as one of the coming painters of a new generation in New York, and written about in that way,'' said Sawin, who knew of Blaine before polio, and befriended her as she convalesced.
For Blaine, the whole ordeal was a close call. After about 18 months, Sawin said, she was able to go home, but her life had become a whitewashed canvas. She needed around-the-clock help for everything from meals to bathing. And she just had to find a way to do what the doctors suggested she could no longer do: Paint.
Astoundingly, she hardly missed a beat.
The exhibit resumes with a 1961 floral still life painting, ``Open Red Tulip.'' The red blooms are painted at their peak, wide open. Like the artist herself, these garden-grown flowers have been brought inside. And, like Blaine, they are propped on gently rumpled white cloth, not unlike a bedsheet.
There is no marked change in her painting ability, and certainly no hint of decline. Polio had stolen her reach, however. She would now have to work smaller - no larger than about 40 inches, Sawin said.
And she tightened her focus: From then on, she painted her surroundings - both at her Upper West Side apartment, and at her Gloucester, Mass., summer home with its profusion of flowering gardens. And she painted floral still lifes, using blossoms from her own gardens arranged under her direction.
``She's a person of incredible will, ever since childhood,'' Sawin said. ``She really overcame a lot of obstacles, including a very narrow-minded mother. And when she was 20, she left home and went to New York to become an artist, with just $80 to her name.''
While at the Richmond School of Art (now Virginia Commonwealth University), from 1939 to 1942, Blaine heard about Hans Hofmann, the great modernist painter and teacher based in Manhattan.
Sensing Hofmann had something to offer her, and excited by the prospects of a new, less provincial life in New York, she fled her hometown. As it turned out, the lessons in abstraction presented to her by Hofmann were vital to Blaine as she developed her own way of seeing and painting.
In the 1979 book, ``Originals: American Women Artists,'' Blaine recounted a turning point in her art, in 1943:
``One day I was working on a drawing from a still life, and suddenly I found myself dividing up the page in a way that was interesting to me. It worked spatially, and yet was kind of witty and inventive. I went right home and made a painting that was larger than anything I'd done before, and fresher.
``I guess it was influenced by Hofmann, but the influence came through in a healthy kind of way. I felt liberated by that painting.
``From then on, I had enormous confidence. The kind of confidence that came, I felt, from making contact with my own feelings. From knowing that I could pull them out at will.''
In response to her frequent exhibits at museums and her longtime New York gallery, Fischbach Gallery on West 57th, critics have regularly praised her work.
``Nell Blaine's recent still lifes and landscapes come at you like some enchanting refrain. They reverberate as if with the theme of a paean in praise of painting, proposing a harmony between art and life,'' wrote Ronny Cohen for Artforum magazine on the occasion of her 50th one-person show in 1991.
``These are works of pleasure and intelligence that seduce us to a clearer understanding of color's power, and this is no small achievement,'' wrote The New York Times that same year.
Through the decades, Blaine has received many grants and fellowships which, along with continuously strong art sales, have enabled her to employ a staff and to keep painting.
Often, it is after midnight when the muse strikes her hard. And she will feel compelled, again, to rouse her kindly helper-friends. And they will set her up in her studio, again, and create a palette for her with fresh dollops of delicious, wet paint.
Then, her companions will leave her alone, and go back to their dreams. And while they sleep, she will create a dream of life.
``Organic is a word I'll stick by,'' Blaine said in the ``Originals'' book. ``It means that the work is an extension of your blood and body; it has the rhythm of nature. This is something artists don't talk much about and it's not even well understood: the fact that there exists a state of feeling and when you reach it, when you hit it, you can't go wrong.''
It's not exactly like a trance, Sawin said, ``but it's something that's totally absorbing.
``Once it gets going, she doesn't want to lose the rhythm. Something takes over - this rhythm moving through her, and onto the canvas.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
``Autumn's Beginning'' is a 1993 watercolor and pastel on paper by
Nell Blaine. Like a visual sponge, she embraces the full spectrum of
color.
Bouquet and Bee'' is a 1993 oil painting on canvas.
Photos
``Bright Water, Blue Clouds,'' a 1991 watercolor and pastel on paper
by Nell Blaine.
``Long Shadow and Spruce,'' a 1992 watercolor on paper.
Graphics
WANT TO GO?
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
AWARDS, LECTURE
At 4:30 p.m. Thursday at Newman Auditorium in William and Mary's
Andrews Hall, Blaine will be given the Cheek Award for Outstanding
Presentation of the Arts. Blaine cannot attend; her biographer
Martica Sawin will accept. Also, Sawin will present a slide lecture
on Blaine. Reception follows at the adjacent Muscarelle Museum.
Events are free; call (757) 221-2700.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY PAINTING by CNB