UMVA Members’ Showcase: Carol Sloane, Lee Chisholm, and Joseph Stapleton

Carol Sloane

These paintings are part of an ongoing series of portraits of people with their beloved pets. I call this body of work Domestic Partners.

This study began with one friend who always sat in the same seat at her favorite window near her begonia, with her dog by her side. Then I began to notice how often this pattern was repeated with other friends and their pets. I watched their companions’ loving attention, sitting at their feet, sitting at the table, circling the room, basically being companionable. There is this deep and obvious mutual attachment and affection, a bond that is nonjudgmental, and sweetly touching.

I was compelled to record what I saw.

I am showing part of this series at the Caldbeck Gallery (6 September–20 October 2024).

 

Lee Chisholm

Every face is a landscape . . . every landscape a living place. Part of the earth . . . shone upon by the sun and the moon and the stars of the universe. Part of the universe.

To achieve a likeness of a face is a challenge—impossible to accomplish with complete success (what would a completely successful likeness look like, after all?); but nevertheless, it is an achievement that is endlessly fascinating in the attempt.

Several years ago, I was part of a group we called “Artists Drawing Artists.” Once a week for a couple of hours we would meet to draw or paint, sitting for one another. The poses were purposefully quick: twelve minutes. Once one pose was finished, another among us would spontaneously get up to offer a different pose. To sit in that room and draw or be drawn was a memorable experience.

A joyful, almost tangible intensity filled the air each time a new sitter took the chair and grew still. Heads would drop down to paper and begin mark making. Then, in a staccato rhythm, one head after another would pop up, stare, and drop down again . . . up, down, up, down. Although we were free to talk, and sometimes did, it was the sound of charcoal, pen, and pencil scraping rapidly across the page—hands outrunning intellects—that for those twelve minutes was typically the only conversation in the room.

The whole interaction had a soulful, call-and-response quality. Each sitter became the caller. their individual features—eyes, nose, ears, hair, forehead, chin, cheeks, mouth, and general expression in that moment—would call something out that everybody else, each in their own voice, would strive to hear and repeat. The result was something choral. Celebratory.

Come to think of it, besides the joyful intensity of the art making and the warmth, humor, and good cheer that accompanied it, something still more subtle and unspoken permeated those evenings. To look at a face—really look (and, as artists drawing artists, to become really still and allow oneself to be looked at)—is rare. Arguably too rare. I think that the still more subtle, never discussed “something” that permeated the room in these sessions was reverence.

Every face is a landscape of the universe.

 

Joseph Stapleton by Robert Solomon

Surrealist/abstractionist Joseph F. Stapleton (1921–94) created more than 400 self-portraits in his seventy-three years, with most created during the 1970s, a decade that was not kind to him. His German Expressionist friend, Jochen Seidel, who had moved to New York City for a teaching position in 1966, had hung himself in May 1971, and Stapleton reacted by drinking twenty-four hours a day. Because he was so inebriated he lost his Art Students League premier painting class, and he was turned down for tenure at Pratt. He merged his devotion to Arshile Gorky, his own fluency in Kaisho, Gyosho, and Sosho calligraphy, and the influence of Seidel’s text-driven drawings to launch a decade of creating over 300 highly expressive self-portraits—over one hundred of which were infused with text.

Stapleton’s lines are consistent and intentional. The contradiction is how the lines separate while appearing as one. The self-portrait appears as an organic maze. Where to begin, where to end, evoking the feeling of finding an important lost map, with very earthly clues—different shapes of vegetation, roots, leaves, and small tributaries of water. Are they not connected? Follow the maze to discover Stapleton’s embedded text—LOOK MORE CLOSELY THIS IS NOT AN EASY DRAWING—as he seemingly provides a tour of his countenance. Is he intentionally trying to be camouflaged? Is he feeling unseen? Instructions appear on his forehead that point to his location—WHERE HERE. And then there are his eyes—always peering out and aware. Stapleton looks lonely and detached here. His zen is being challenged by his alcohol-driven depression.

Stapleton is using the entire surface. This is a strong statement, biblical in tone. He’s evoking feelings of immediacy and worry, but maybe also discovering some truth. Along the right side next to the title phrase he writes “SEE AND BELIEVE.” His eyes show real concern with singular attention. He’s looking down to his right, but at the same time he’s able to make the viewer feel they’re being seen. Across the top of the self-portrait Stapleton writes “LOOKING AT YOU AGAIN.” With his extraordinary control of line, shading, and erasure, he creates a sense that he’s surrounded by fire and chaos, but still within his control. If you flip the drawing horizontally (or just hold it up to a mirror) you can better understand the complexity of Stapleton’s line work in this self-portrait.

This self-portrait exemplifies Stapleton’s expertise in provoking complex and lasting emotions. One of the most frequent comments I recorded in my interviews with nonagenarians close to him for his biography was that he was known widely for the intelligence of his mark making and his authoritative use of negative space. Every line is purposeful and draws us in, while negative space acts as a tabula rasa, allowing us to imagine a completed portrait. Here he cries out for recognition as his alcohol-driven depressive state provides no anchor.

Joseph Stapleton spent many an evening at lower Manhattan jazz clubs, mostly at the Half Note in SoHo, and became friendly with many of the top names who played there. Now, near the end of his decade-long experiment infusing text into self-portraits, we can almost feel Stapleton’s creative energy and the quick, light touches he makes with his brush—almost as if he’s playing that sax himself. Look how integrated the text “THINKING OF DUKE ELLINGTON” is, tucked neatly under his right ear. And next to his left chin, seemingly part of his beard, Stapleton wrote “I MISS YOU DEAR DUKE.” And with quick brush marks he defines the eyes, making them seem compressed, sad, anxious, maybe even teary.

As the right-holder and curator to the Joseph F. Stapleton Drawing Collection and also Joseph Stapleton’s biographer, I am quite close to the drawings in the collection. For that reason I asked a friend, David Marks, to contribute to the assessment of the four self-portraits. In the end, the four assessments are an assimilation of our views.

 

Image at top: Carol Sloane, Mika and Ann, oil on canvas, 44 x 42 in.