Moral Compass: Artists Respond to Crises

Temple Judea Museum exhibition January – March 2021

Over these many years my work has consistently been non-objective, meaning that it is concerned with expressing my ideas about shape, color, light, dark, texture etc., the formal elements that artists use to create a visual image. They are not story pictures. However, while working in my studio in the midst of the pandemic, I found my imagery shifting ever so slightly. It was as if, subconsciously, crisis was expressing itself through my brushes and pencils. A title popped into my head for the abstraction that was on my work table, Landscape of Fear. The blue horizontal across the top is studded with projecting squares and circles that intrude themselves into the viewer’s consciousness in a disquieting and challenging manner. The asymmetrical vertical red lines are menacing, just like the poisonous, stinging tentacles of a Man of War jelly fish. It is not a story picture. More an abstracted backdrop, or stage set for a play that none of us knows the end of. We can only hope and pray for a Landscape of Peace in our future.

Rita Rosen Poley