Carol Mothner: Little Treasures

CAROL MOTHNER LITTLE TREASURES

CAROL MOTHNER LITTLE TREASURES

DECEMBER 1, 2023 - JANUARY 6, 2024

1613 Paseo de Peralta I Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 I 505.988.3250 I lewallengalleries.com I contact@lewallengalleries.com Cover: Chinese Puppets II, n.d., gouache on paperboard, 11 x 12.25 in.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS FAUNA PG. 5-20 JOURNAL PAGES PG. 22-36 FLORA PG. 37-52 FIGURES & OBJECTS PG. 53-70 VALENTINE'S - PG. 71-74 INTERIOR PG. 75-76 CV - PG .77

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CAROL MOTHNER LITTLE TREASURES

Take an artistic practice such as egg tempera and the very term calls up the flourishing painting traditions of Renaissance Europe and those traditions’ devotion to the meticulously rendered subject. When we think of the great artists of the era—Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Caravaggio, and Sandro Botticelli among them— we remember their great works, such as the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, and the Birth of Venus. We forget the intimate world of the small: the sketchbook, the single subject free from the context of a surrounding environment and all of the anonymous portraits that lacked the talismans (an ermine, perhaps, or a pearl earring) that help us to recall them. Art history’s greats did these types of works on humbler subjects, even as they painted the likenesses of gods and nobility.

The familiar, the secular, and the domestic provide a foundation for artistic practice. Longtime Santa Febased artist Carol Mothner is in that world. The allegorical or symbolic is not abandoned but realized from within. She peers into interiors, as through a doorway into a chamber of waiting treasures.

Tastes in art shift over time. The grandiose events of myth and history commemorated in allegorical paintings and sculptures, for instance, give way to modest tales of everyday people and commonplace concerns. The “big” in art and the “little” exist on a continuum in terms of subject and scale. During the Dutch Golden Age, portraiture as well as allegorical and historical subjects (considered exalted) existed side by side with landscape, still-life, and genre painting.

From the time of the High Renaissance at least, that hierarchy reigned. In our own day, we are far less inclined to call any one genre of painting, or any one art form, the pinnacle of artistic practice. Or we should be less inclined. The carefully carved end of a graphite pencil can be a work of art. It can be a sculpture.

Of course, there is irony in taking a medium that is used to create a work of art (the pencil) and making it into the art itself. Mothner invites us into that world of works that are petite and, at times, outright miniature in scale. But the subject matter is bigger than the sum of its parts. Whether monotypes, egg tempera, oils, gouache, mixed media, or sculpture, her output reflects the periods in art that were, such as that of naturalism in the Age of Enlightenment, and the longtime still-life tradition of natura morta, and reminds us that they still are.

But these traditions also serve as the basis of conflation, or superimposition, for the expressing of Mothner’s ideas. There is no getting around the reference to the Dutch Master in the title Golden Rembrandt Tulip. But this is not to say that Mothner’s painting is “after Rembrandt” in the typical way that artists use the word “after.” The tonal qualities of the single tulip and its background, however, reflect the warm and dusky hues and interior ambiguity present even in his self-portraits.

Mothner is not working, per se, from the tradition of the Dutch Masters—though her work draws to mind the light and soft focus of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings—or that of the naturalists who were committed to recording the observable world in the manner of empirical study. She is working outside of them. They are not the styles in which she works, in other words. They are the mediums. Mothner is working in her own world of imagination and her own “style.”

Even without a decades-long career in which she has mastered some of the most challenging and demanding of painting techniques, her background and training is formidable. Born in New York in 1943, Mothner attended Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall High School before pursuing a creative career, first at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art and the prestigious Art Students League in the 1950s, then Brooklyn College, the School of the Visual Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting in the 1960s.

A string of solo exhibitions from the 1970s to now reflect the intimate and private. Through the rendering of still-lifes and personal objects, comes a world that is autobiographical, even if only in a symbolic way.

The titles of these shows include From My Window, A Room of One’s Own, Private Places, and now Little Treasures. And they are little. Many of the paintings are in the arena of 12-by-12 inches or smaller. But they also reference the importance of the little as the bearer of big ideas.

American painter Arthur Wesley Dow was an instructor at the Art Students League, one of Mothner’s alma maters, at the start of the 20 th century. Though long before her time, some types of artistic traditions that Dow exploited in his own practice are referenced by Mothner, either by chance or by design.

Dow was influenced by the Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print tradition, and he imparted Japanese design techniques and aesthetics to his students. He was working at a time of increased interest in the so-called “exotic,” when Asian arts filled the parlors in the decorative styles of Japonisme and Orientalism. We recall such traditions in Mothner’s mixed media renderings of “dragon dogs” and Chinese puppets.

Any figure in a work of art provides the potential for personality. And so, Mothner’s Chinese puppets, which dangle from strings in the manner of marionettes, resplendent in regal, silken clothes of blue, are bound like we are, to the wheel of time. Their god is the hand that moves them, animating their limbs.

Until such time as they can dance again, they rest in equipoise. Treasures. Works of art inside a work of art.

There is still-life in these old traditions, in these little treasures, and there is still life.

—Michael Abatemarco

Only Child, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 8.87 x 8.87 inches

The Long Wait, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 8.12 x 10.12 inches 6

The Dawning of a New Day, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 8.25 x 10 inches

The Last Egg with Newspaper, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 8 x 8 inches 8

Dur, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 8 x 8 inches

First Born, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 7.75 x 7.75 inches 10

Townee Nest with Finest Eggs, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 6.25 x 6.12 inches

Untitled (Nest), n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 7.62 x 7.62inches 12

Bird on Limb, n.d.

Oil on board, 8 x 8 inches 13

Bird with Blue, n.d.

Oil on board, 6 x 6 inches 14

Bird in Flight, n.d.

Oil on board, 8 x 8 inches

Flower & Bird I, 1991 Oil on handmade paper, 10 x 13 inches 16

To A Wild Rose Silly Goose III, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 11.75 x 11.75 inches 17

Masked and Ringed Neck Sill Goose, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 12.12 x 12 inches 18

Masked Silly Goose, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 12.25 x 12.12 inches 19

Mating Call for the Silly Goose, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 10.37 x 10.12 inches 20

Pterodactyl Egg, 2007 Mixed media on paper, 6.25 x 3.50 inches

Journal Pages: Two Bluebirds, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 3.50 x 4.50 inches 22

About Dana Newman, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 14 x 11.25 inches 23

Journal Pages: Elizabeth's Findings, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 5.62 x 7.50 inches 24

Dragon Dog Blue, 2012 Mixed media on paper, 4.75 x 3.38 inches 25

Journal Pages: Grapes, 2007 Mixed media on paper, 7.50 x 7 inches 26

Dragon Dog I & Dragon Dog VII (diptych), 2012 Mixed media on paper, 4.50 x 7.50 inches 27

Dragon Dog IV & Dragon Dog VIII (diptych), 2012 Mixed media on paper, 4.50 x 7.50 inches 28

Journal Pages: An Open Letter to Tom Udack, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 7.50 x 7.50 inches 29

Journal Pages: Dueling Cranes, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 8.25 x 8.75 inches 30

Journal Pages: Egypt, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 3.50 x 4.50 inches 31

Journal Pages: Iris & Red Myth, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 3.50 x 4.50 inches 32

Journal Pages: Latin America, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 7.35 x 7.50 inches 33

Journal Pages: The Weekend, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 5.87 x 7.62 inches 34

Personal Dragons, n.d.

Graphite and ink on paper, 5 x 14 inches 35

Portrait of a Messenger, n.d.

Graphite and ink on paper, 6 x 7 inches 36

Blue Iris, n.d.

Oil on panel, 8 x 8 inches 37

Blue Iris II, n.d.

Oil on panel, 8 x 8 inches 38

Botanical Mélange 3, n.d.

Oil on panel, 7 x 7 inches 39

Pink Flowers, n.d.

Oil on panel, 8 x 8 inches 40

Cactus, n.d.

Oil on panel, 4.50 x 8 inches 41

Pink Flower, n.d.

Oil on panel, 6 x 6 inches 42

Flowers, n.d.

Oil on panel, 10 x 10 inches 43

Yellow Crocus, n.d.

Oil on panel, 5.88 x 5.88 inches 44

Golden Rembrandt Tulip, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 10.25 x 10.12 inches 45

Foggy Dusk, 1997 Monotype & mixed media on paper, 9.75 x 9.50 inches 46

Single Rose, n.d.

Acrylic panel, 6 x 6 inches 47

Pink Tulip, n.d.

Oil on panel, 8 x 8 inches 48

Single Yellow Tulip, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 12.25 x 12.25 inches 49

Yellow Tulip, n.d.

Oil on panel, 4.25 x 4.25 inches 50

Two Night Tulips, 1996 Monotype & mixed media on paper, 10 x 9.75 inches 51

Two Peach Tulips, n.d.

Monotype & mixed media on paper, 12.87 x 12.75 inches 52

Armored Crescent Helmet, n.d.

Oil on board, 10 x 10 inches 53

Pregnant Madonna, n.d.

Oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches 54

Armored Women in Pieces, n.d.

Oil on panel, 17 x 17 inches 55

Armored Pieces, n.d.

Oil on panel, 12.50 x 12.50 inches 56

Bloodless Conquest, 1992 Gouache on paperboard, 7.50 x 8.50 inches 57

Chinese Puppets II, n.d.

Gouache on paperboard, 11 x 12.25 inches 58

The Missing 9-11, n.d.

Original lithograph on paper, 6.87 x 6.37 inches 59

The Missing 9-11 (Ed. 5/50), n.d.

Original lithograph on paper, 6.87 x 6.37 inches 60

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, 2007 Etching on paper, 8 x 8 inches 61

Girl with Dragon Tattoo (Ed. 12/15), n.d.

Original lithograph on paper, 7.87 x 7.87 inches 62

Transformation: Anger, n.d.

Graphite on board, 13 x 11.50 inches 63

Invitation #1, 1990 Graphite on board, 7 x 9.75 inches 64

The Island, n.d.

Egg tempera on panel, 8.75 x 8.75 inches 65

Toy Horse, n.d.

Oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches 66

Bread and Garlic, n.d.

On paper, 9.87 x 9.62 inches 67

Tiffany Box & Scroll, n.d.

Oil on panel, 6.25 x 6.25 inches 68

Zozobra, n.d.

Oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Chocolate Kisses, n.d.

Acrylic on panel, 6.50 x 7 inches 70

Valentine (K & Kiss), n.d.

Oil on panel, 7 x 7 inches

Valentine (Box of Kisses & Letter to Daniel), 2013 Oil on panel, 9.75 x 9 inches 72

Valentine (Fan), n.d.

Mixed media assemblage, 9.50 x 14.50 x 1.25 inches

Valentine (Single Pink Tulip), n.d.

Monotype and mixed media on paper, 4.75 x 4.75 inches 74

Hidden Chamber, 1990 Gouache on paper, 17 x 15 inches

The Promise, n.d.

Mixed media on paper, 9 x 8 inches 76

CAROL MOTHNER B. 1943 in BROOKLYN, NEW YORK SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS EDUCATION 1957 1958-59 1960-62 1962-65 1965

Brooklyn Museum School of Art, NY Art Students League, New York, NY Brooklyn College, NY School of the Visual Arts, New York, NY Skowhegan School of Painting, ME

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2023 Little Treasures, LewAllen Galleries,

Santa Fe, NM 2018 Tenacity, Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2016 Aloft, Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2012 Armor and Companions: A Close Examination, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM 2011 J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY 2006 A Voice of Her Own, Gerald Peters

Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2004 New Work, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY 2001 Lives of a Saint: Transformations,

Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Carol Mothner Retrospective: Artist in-Residence, Evansville Museum of

Arts and Sciences, Evansville, IN 1999 The Contemplative Object: Retrospective, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA 1997 Promises, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1993 Theatre of Dolls, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM 1991 Private Places, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM 1986 Carol Mothner: A Room of One's Own,

Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1983 Carol Mothner: The Four Seasons, The

Witkin Gallery, New York, NY 1981 Carol Mothner: Still Life, Blair Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM 1979 Carol Mothner: From My Window,

Janus Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2011 Face to Face, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM 2010 Artist Perspectives, Gerald Peters

Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2009 Fincher, Johnson, Mothner, Gerald

Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Works on Paper, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM 2007 On Paper II, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM Lifting the Veil: New Mexico Women

and the Tricultural Myth, Institute

of American Indian Arts Museum 2006 Spirited Expressions, Gerald Peters

Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2005 Contemporary Realism, Gerald Peters

Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Good Heart, Gerald Peters Gallery,

Santa Fe, NM Selection of New Works from Gallery Artists, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Book Arts, New Mexico Capitol Arts

Foundation, Santa Fe, NM 2004 Beyond Words: Artists and the Book,

Museum of Fine Arts, San Fe, NM Realism Now: Traditions & Departures

— Mentors & Protégés, Vose Galleries, Boston, MA Uninterrupted Mysteries, invitational,

J. Cacciola Gallery, Bernardsville, NJ Re-presenting Representation, John

Pence Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2003 Three by Five to Eleven by Fourteen,

Gallery Selections, Gerald Peters

Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Re-presenting Representation VI — The

West, Rockwell Museum of Western

Art, Corning, NY Re-presenting Representation VI, Arnot

Museum, Elmira, NY Magic Realists: A New Generation,

Sangre de Cristo Arts Center, Pueblo, CO Tempera/New Temperaments, Frye Art

Museum, Seattle, WA

Piero's Angel, 1995 Oil on panel, 9.50 x 3.50 inches 78

1613 Paseo de Peralta I Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 I 505.988.3250 I lewallengalleries.com I contact@lewallengalleries.com © 2023 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC | Artwork © Carol Mothner 79