In “Rhythm & Roots: A Love Story,” at David Lusk Gallery, identical-twin painters Jerry and Terry Lynn combine surrealism, psycho-social portraiture, highly energized abstract gestures, and their own brand of impressionism. The result is work that celebrates the individual and his ability to imagine no matter how limited his circumstances.
The Lynns, who work together as the
singularized “Twin,” tell just enough of the story to allow
allegorical, thematic, and personal readings. For example, the
60-by-48-inch acrylic painting Lonely is skilled
portraiture and an autobiographical nod to the artists’
childhoods in which a preteen Jerry or Terry turns away from
an adult-male figure dressed in overalls and standing in a cotton field. The
young artist’s posture and gaze are penetrating, yearning. Thin, crisp lines curl about
the painting, suggesting the dreams and goals which are gestating in the
youngster’s mind as well as the pubescent energy dancing around the lower part of
his body. The adult figure could be a fading but important memory when a
young man realizes he wants something different, something more.
A preacher with a crisp white shirt and neatly tailored suit stands
in front of a church in Burn. The ground around him is molten
red and violet, the sky is brimstone white, and burnt-yellow flames
lick the windows and roof of the church. Even as the clapboard
building burns, the preacher looks beyond the loss at the viewer and the work
that remains to be done.
In the mixed-media work The
Beginning, slender white-and-black lines and high-key pinks,
violets, blues, and yellows swirl around the expressionless face and slumped shoulders of a
man dressed in a rough brown garment. This
juxtaposition of the intensely colored, abstractly gestured
background and the enigmatic central figure characterizes many
of Twin’s collaborations. These works are particularly
open to interpretation. Above the man of The
Beginning, stark-white lines join in what looks to be a ribbon banner.
The banner is not filled in but could very well proclaim
the man an “Unsung Hero.” Or is he a more personal
figure? Perhaps “Granddaddy Charles,” a hardworking
Southerner who told tall tales and sang spirituals?
The 36-by-36-inch acrylic Forever can also be read
in several ways. This painting’s semi-abstract subject
could be a vision of a dark-haired fairy dressed in gossamer
surrounded by violet-blues and transparent wings of
fireflies. The painting also suggests the lowered,
shadowed head of a girl lost in a daydream or the elongated face
of an insect breaking out of a silk cocoon.
Early Rising, a seamless integration of
background and foreground and one of Twin’s most
haunting works, depicts a woman picking cotton at dawn.
The muted colors of early morning, the shadowed stand
of trees toward which she walks, and the
exaggerated curvature of sky make magic seem more possible
as Twin transforms the long sack dragging the
ground behind the laborer into a wedding gown and her
slow walk into a processional march.
Included in the exhibit are 200 of Twin’s
smaller paintings (sizes ranging from 5-by-7 inches to
20-by-16 inches), which allow the viewer to witness an
artistic evolution. Quickly executed cartoons and
deliberately crude quasi-folk-art caricatures serve as
studies for the exhibition’s larger, more formal portraiture.
In the lexicon of Twin, Holla and
Gangsta are not pokes but gently comedic notings of the exaggerated
attitudes of stereotyping.
Wanderer and White House are small works of
compressed energy and evocation. The central figure
in the 14-by-11-inch acrylic Wanderer is utterly still,
expectant. She contains decades of patient waiting.
Her arms are gently cradled at the waist of her white
muslin skirt, the folds of which are masterfully
rendered. Her deeply shadowed face and the dark umber
background heighten her isolation. The
10-by-8-inch acrylic painting of a clapboard church,
White House, dissolves in a Turneresque landscape of hazy light
and color as the two brothers pool and reconfigure
memories of the intense rites of passage they experienced
in a rural church just outside Memphis.
With their skilled draftsmanship, genuine
feeling, and melding of artistic styles (more apparent in
this show than ever), there is much to admire in
Twin’s “Rhythm & Roots.”
“Rhythm & Roots: A Love Story” at David Lusk Gallery through January 29th
