You and I are not the first to wonder at how similar looking into the night sky is to staring into a tidepool. Tallmadge Doyle has an entire exhibit at the Karin Clarke Gallery at 760 Willamette in Eugene which presents one painting after another that challenges you to ask if you’re looking at the sea or the sky.
For example, Tallmadge has a series of four all titled “Celestial Ocean.” As you give yourself time to fall into the dream of just one or two of these, you will find yourself in the deep ocean among the marine life yet simultaneously in deep space among the constellations and galaxies: microscope and telescope at the same time. Your brain kind of goes wonky in a good way.
You are experiencing that wonderful word estrangement, in which the familiar is made strange and new, as if you had never seen it before. This is really the heart of art: how the artist creates something ordinary, different, so we appreciate it in a new way and see with new eyes. It has become defamiliarized, estranged from its everyday reality. You get excited about it all over again.
To see what I mean, go to the exhibit and dial up your cosmic eyes!
Coming up on Saturday, December 2, from 1-3, I will be representing KLCC and Viz City at the new Saturday Sessions at the Don Dexter Gallery. I’ll be there for a meet and greet as well as an interactive guided tour of the Ray Bidegain exhibit. I’ll be using it as a way to talk about what the heck photogravures are, and, of course, my favorite topic, how to look at art. I hope to see you there!
