SanFranciscoArtMagazine.com, November, 2001 issue
Click the link below to see the review about the "North Coast Four
- Napa Land Trust Paintings & Other Landscapes" show at China Basin
Landing (Sept 22 - Nov 3, 2001).
Press Democrat, Q Section, October 29, 2000
Press Democrat, October 6, 2000
Women's Voices, October, 2000
Healdsburg Tribune, October, 2000
From Bill Wheeler, August, 2000
These four women have been friends and associates for many years, mostly
centered around Thursday night life drawing at the Cultural Arts Council, SoFo2
Gallery on Wilson St. in Santa Rosa, California. When one of the four,
Linda Kammer, was given a one-person show at the SoFo2 Gallery, she offered to
broaden it to include her three friends, Jocelyn Audette, Dana Hawley, and Hanya
Popova Parker.
Thus we are treated to a meaningful and tasty show of four emerging artists
with a parallel grounding and sharing a common artistic vision rooted in
figurative drawing and water coloring from the Thursday night group and
expanding to landscape oils of the North Coast.
A common thread of influence runs through all their work - the painterliness
of the Bay Area Figurative and Landscape School. These four are a band, an
association, a group. Essayist John Fitz Gibbon talks about art as
friendship, sharing, and giving, not the cliche of the starving artist in the
garret. Artists are meant to mingle, to be supportive, and inspirational
to each other.
We have the privilege to live in and around one of the most spectacular
landscapes in the world. The desire to paint it is irresistible, like
Kafka's Munger Kunstler breaking his fast. That being said, we tie Ulysses
to the mast, and say the image of the landscape is irrelevant - sky, trees, and
land. That's what post cards are for. We could just as well be
painting old shoes and dirty socks, eliciting the same passion. What is
important is the abstract - color, composition, spatial organization, and
finally personal expression, and what fellow Thursday-nighter James Milikan
describes as existential self-indulgence, and what Diebenkorn was so good at, the expression
of the spirit.
Linda Kammer
Her paintings are deeply expressive and raw, directly connected with her
emotion. She gives totally in her life and her art. When you look at
her paintings, you are looking at her. She is the Miles Davis of the
group, cacophonous, yet poetic.
Dana Hawley
Her palette is muted, like Mahler music, deep, dark, formidable, and full of
surprises. Her paintings are chromatically keyed in the lower register,
like a dream on a hot summer night.
Jocelyn Audette
She is more Debussey, with a brighter palette. Her recent paintings
show a major breakthrough, a realization of her talent.
Hanya Popova Parker
She is Russian, very Russian, dramatic, and powerful. She has a great
feeling for line, recalling Kandinsky. Her paintings and drawings, many in
stark black and white, evolve into searing color, like a clash of percussion in
a Russian symphony.
