Treacy Ziegler at F.A.N. Gallery

Treacy Ziegler:
Film noir in living color

ANDREW MANGRAVITE

“After the Storm,” one of the paintings in Treacy Ziegler’s new show, is a small work (a mere five by four inches) that produces a monumental effect. To begin, the image itself is simple—a house in a bleak landscape, no trees, no bushes, no clouds in the sky. Those who have followed Ziegler’s career can probably imagine this painting even as I describe it. It’s another corner of Ziegler-ville, a town in Ziegler-land where an eerie stillness reigns. If there were a soundtrack, it would probably be a Lovecraftian chorus of whippoorwills calling. Ziegler’s work has always put me in mind of H.P. Lovecraft’s haunted New England communities. I don’t mean to say that she deals in the monstrous or the abnormal—indeed, her typical landscapes are generally devoid of any type of life whatsoever. But she does manage to convey a mood similar to that conjured up by the great New England fantasist—a sort of hushed and dreadful expectation.

Getting back to “After the Storm,” the extreme concentration of the imagery, the stripped-down nature of it—her house looks like a toy carved from a wooden block, there are no shutters, shingles or architectural details of any type—and the bright, slightly “off” color schemes she uses all combine to create a sense of monumentality and disquiet. The technique works equally well whether the resultant work is five by four inches or 40 x 50.

New directions: Oils, people, even birds...

It’s been a while since I’ve seen an exhibit of Ziegler’s work, and some things have changed. For one thing, she now works with oils in addition to her traditional monoprint technique. Then too, she has begun to imagine interiors—allowing us to venture inside the walls of her forbidding dwellings. “When We Got Home,” the show’s signature work, offers a view of the corner of a room lit by one of those conical hanging lamps that were such a fixture of film noir, with a table, two chairs and a few extras, including a partially glimpsed Ziegler landscape on the wall and a cut flower in a glass of water. It looks a bit like the setting for a play, and not necessarily a happy one.

“Before an Open Window,” executed in black-and-white, is a study in desolation. There is no sense of life being lived in this room. It’s almost airless. “Return” and “In the Light Before Dawn” are a pair of mood-pieces. In the latter work, a simple enough conceit—a house by the water is reflected in the water—comes through with a big emotional payoff. “Circus Train” and “Half-Light” are monotypes depicting Edward Hopper-ish scenes of urban life. “Half-Light” features a tiny figure on a bicycle—the first depiction of human life that I’ve observed in the artist’s work. Also of note are several portrait-like studies of birds—yet another new direction that Ziegler’s work appears to be taking.

Four other artists upstairs

Works of four other artists— Al Gury, Kirk McBride, Abigail McBride and Mary Giammarino– are on display in F.A.N.’s upstairs gallery. . Of the four, I was most impressed by Gury’s work. He has contributed four landscapes, whose thick gilded frames give them a certain “bygone” feel. His works are vaguely nostalgic in effect. Their subjects are intimate glimpses of nature—a bit of autumnal wood, some tangled underbrush—but these are executed in a vigorous style, with the oils applied in an almost sculpted manner.
Kirk McBride contributes a trio of cityscapes rendered in a realistic manner, albeit far from photorealism. He enjoys the textures of his paints too much to go in for that particular style. Abigail McBride seems to prefer the country to the city, and her brightly-colored sketchy depictions of country and shore scenes make for an interesting contrast. Mary Giammarino paints bright, “feathery” looking landscapes that recall Impressionism.