Davidson’s Jessica Gordon is a self-taught painter who is represented by Robert Lange Studios. One of her paintings is in the prestigious Bennett Collection.
SEPTEMBER 2018
29 LAKE NORMAN CURRENTS
paints, a move she says was “frightening” because “I didn’t know what I was doing.” She learned by trial and error, painting at night, when her children were asleep, often until 1 a.m. in the morning. Within a year, she was submitting her paintings to art competitions and winning first place and “Best in Show.” But it was her fateful decision to post a photo of her painting Compose on Instagram that led to acclaimed art dealers clamoring to represent her. Now at 39, she lives in Davidson with her husband and two children, Caleb (12) and Jenna (8), both of
whom have appeared in her paintings. She is represented by the esteemed Robert Lange Studios, which for the past few years has been voted Best Art Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina by the Charleston City Paper and Charleston Living Magazine. Her paintings fetch anywhere from $1,200 to $10,000. One of them, The Odds Against It All, now rests in the prestigious Bennett Collection.
Aiming for ambiguity There is an ambiguity to her compositions that makes them particularly interesting. This is purposeful. “I don’t want to
steer anyone,” she says. In the dramatic This Way and The Anchor, for instance, one sees themes of love and sex, or are they power and resistance? In A Dark Kind of Angel, a young woman, vulnerable in a sheer blouse, is not thwarted by a downpour, nor your appraising gaze. In For the Weary, a woman lies in a hammock, water rising up around her, at peace, but also seemingly overwhelmed. Water is an ever-present theme that seems to take on shifting symbolic meanings in each painting. In Compose, water appears to represent life-giving, artistic inspiration. In The Odds Against It All, it
lends an almost baptismal initiation. And in In Bloom, water appears as a source of both life and death, while in For Kicks, En Pointe and Bliss, a black background of water lends buoyancy and humor to a dancer’s legs — but there is gravity also. Robert Lange Studios will be hosting Gordon’s first solo show this month in Charleston. The title of her show, At Summer’s End, represents the bittersweet duality of life. “In most of my paintings, it’s not just all beauty and ease,” says Gordon. “There is something in them that represents a check to that happiness.”