Paintings are a portal for artist commissioned by VAA

For island artist Carol Schwennesen, whose often large canvases are a vibrant choreography of color, painting is a kind of gateway to another dimension. Indeed, the panel she painted as a commissioned artist for Vashon Allied Arts’ auction, “Vive La France,” is called “Portal,” and the painting will be auctioned Saturday night.

By Juli Goetz Morser • September 15, 2015 2:11 pm
Carol Schwennesen’s painting
Carol Schwennesen’s painting

For island artist Carol Schwennesen, whose often large canvases are a vibrant choreography of color, painting is a kind of gateway to another dimension. Indeed, the panel she painted as a commissioned artist for Vashon Allied Arts’ auction, “Vive La France,” is called “Portal,” and the painting will be auctioned Saturday night.

For Schwennesen, who’s been painting since she was 6 and teaches private classes to students, the act of painting is a nonconceptual process.

“It has to do with losing yourself in the paint and not worrying about that other part of your brain that’s crabbing and snorting and pulling tricks,” Schwennesen said. “Bottom line for me is I paint until I see or feel there is more than one dimension. It’s all mixed up, and all the atoms and molecules have to be together. I call it four dimensional paintings,” she said, adding with a laugh, “My students say, ‘But it’s a flat surface,’ then I have to whip them into shape.”

It’s often while she is painting, or afterward, that images reveal themselves in the paint. She said with amusing self-deprecation that she wasn’t at all sure why she added pink to the dark indigo of “Portal.” She liked it, but wasn’t sure it was right, so she waited a bit. Then one day, walking down the hall toward her home studio and the painting, she saw a garden of orchids and, upon closer inspection, a deer.

“It was nothing intentional, but then I emphasized it,” she said. “I didn’t sit there and think I’ll do a painting of deer in a field of orchids with no stems.”

The artist said she asked herself what paintings do for her and realized it’s her way of getting to the other side of herself and other things.

“It is like a portal, and I can’t get there until I paint, ” Schwennesen said. “I first balked at using the name because all paintings are a portal, but it’s okay as this one spun off about five more paintings that are equally unruly.”

“Vive La France” will be held on Friday and Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at the Open Space for Arts & Community. Tickets are available at the Blue Heron or vashonalliedarts.org.