by Caole Lowry
Ridgway, Colorado [Winter 2003-2004]
Some of the greatest art takes us to new and imaginative worlds, yet the unique and powerful artistry of Maggie Remington reminds us that it is here and now, where we stand on the earth, in this world, after all. Maggie is a "southwestern landscape painter" of a new breed. Home base is Ridgway, Colorado one of the many places she does landscape work which is created on the landscape, with the landscape. Honest and true, this work has the local flavors of gold, green, blue, orange and brown with names like: "Upper Colona, Ouray, CO"; "Grand Mesa, CO"; "Tiyoweh Trails, Montrose,CO". She uses the earth, literally, to create her art and the earth responds, dancing with her—and her viewers—as she creates or they view.
Remington
has been compelled to produce this wonderful work travelling
throughout the West and Mexico. Her palette is the earth’s sometimes
subtle,
sometimes vibrant pigments; her easel is the ground on which she walks,
each canvas completed and carefully dated, given the geographical name
of the place she stopped to get to know. Her methods are logical
madness,
ambitious and sweaty, the results of hiking and digging, mixing and
hauling
mud and sand, crushed rock applied by hand, twig or weed. The results
are
beautiful—large canvases like tanned hides, with organic, biomorphic
earth
patterns, earth-stained and recorded by this artist-lover of the
landscape,
making her tribute to the ground we all stand upon. For Maggie it is a
sacred act, this art-making. For us it is a visual experience that
connects
us to each other and to our geological present and past—it is sensual
and
most of all, real. Come see this remarkable work by a remarkable
artist.
It is interesting to note that Maggie is a distant cousin to Frederick
Remington and her paternal Grandmother had Remington as her middle name
and she married Harold Remington---all from upper New York--Watertown.
Maggie’s friend the writer, Silver Stanfill expresses the profundity of
this art on the artists website at www.maggieremington.com:
"Remington’s earth paintings celebrate patterns of nature: river beds
or
mountain ranges seen from ten miles up, a canyon’s geology, anatomy of
a trout jaw, an amoeba extending a pseudopod, DNA structure. But rather
than aiming for recognition, Remington’s work provokes reflection.
Instead
of showing what any sojourner could see, her paintings invite viewers
to
experience a response to a place. Think of Rothko (spiritual majesty)
meets
O’Keefe (commitment to locality)."
Maggie Remington has exhibited her Earth Paintings at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA October of 2003. Paul Hawken, author of "Natural Capitalism " wrote "No conference on Earth celebrates more fully the possibilities of creating a world that is conducive to life. Bioneers is central to the re-imagination of what it means to be human."
Caole Lowry, artist and art
writer, is the owner of Planet Earth and
the Four Directions Gallery, Grand Junction, Colorado.