Playing With The Improbable

    She is a large woman, this Jane Filer, dressed in a loose, unbelted dress made of what might in another time be called homespun.  Her intelligent, cheerful face is framed by masses of curls just this side of frizzy. She talks about her pictures now on view at the White Gallery in Lakeville with affection and a maternal knowledge of what each shows and how it was made.  

   Mercifully, there is no artifice or pomposity in her descriptions nor in her work. But there are lots of references — both prehistoric and historical — in these colorful, happy paintings that can at first seem primitive.  

   Indeed, Filer is something of a limner who travels throughout her beloved North Carolina absorbing natural beauty and creatures and then filters them through her imagination into these busy, life-filled pictures.

   These paintings are essentially flat, in-your-face images. The picture plane is not manipulated with light and shadow to produce perspective. What sense of depth there is comes from size relationships, but even these are fanciful. And yet this technique allows a viewer to find relationships between figures and animals and trees and structures unique to each picture.  

   You are always discovering new things in a Filer work.

   For example, in a large, new canvas, “Big Trees at the Bascom,â€� painted for the White show, two connected ovals of blue are obviously ponds or lakes. But look closely: On the edge of the right oval, tiny male figures are silhouetted against the blue water, which — streaked with white — now appears to be a plunging waterfall.  It is a magical “discovery,â€� and one that viewers get often with Filer.

   In “Pharaoh, Pheasant and Ponyâ€� a small man is on his knees playing with a bird almost as large as he, while another man — clearly distant but in the same apparent plane — is very small compared to the antelope or deer that he rides.

   There are recurring characteristics in all of Filer’s work at the White: Color, emphatic yet delicate, almost like washes sometimes, is everywhere. Her blues and greens and oranges are her own, like trademarks. And the simple outline drawing of houses (always tall with tiny high-up windows and in coloring-book colors) animals (birds of every kind, deer, horses often in full gallop with no leg touching the ground) and people (always out of scale to their surroundings and animal companions) are meticulous. Scales and relationships vary according to the story within each painting.

   These pictures brim with life and stories that viewers can intuit or invent. They are happy, cheerful works that represent Filer’s comfortable relationship with nature and with North Carolina in particular. It’s no surprise she has been commissioned to create a 5- foot mural for the international arrival terminal at Raleigh-Durham Airport.  Who better to introduce North Carolina to visitors.

     “The Art of Jane Filerâ€� is at the White

Gallery, 342 Main St., Lakeville, through Aug. 29. Hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Or by appointment.  860-435-1029

     

     

     

     

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