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Two artists, she in San Francisco, he in Ashland: both had painted for over 25 years, unknown to each other. Both were over 60 years old and single again, but young enough to try Internet dating. Shoshanah emailed an image of one of her paintings--a brilliantly colored jungle filled with bats, thorn-covered leaves and people with bones and arteries exposed. She thought to herself, “My recent work is pretty bold: if he doesn’t like it, a relationship is unlikely.” Craig wrote back, “Made my scalp tingle. Reminds me of Pablo Ameringo’s visionary paintings from the Amazon.” They were off to a good start. Shoshanah had lived in San Francisco most of her life, building a career as a designer of museum exhibitions, graphics, and interactive educational software, always drawing and painting for her own pleasure. In 1999 she began channeling her creativity into “intuitive painting” as described by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley in Life, Paint, and Passion. In 2003 the Canessa Gallery in San Francisco exhibited a series of her intuitive paintings under the title, “Infinite Worlds Within” (see Visionary Paintings). Craig had spent nearly all his adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area, first as a graduate student at Stanford, then as a program director at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, a center for social action research and a free-standing graduate school of clinical and social psychology. Later he was director of the Ark Foundation, with the goal of helping to end the Cold War. He co-edited several books: Sanctions for Evil, Citizen Summitry, and Securing Our Planet. Later he turned to coaching authors and continues to do so (www.bookcreationcoach.com). When Craig and Shoshanah met in person, they embarked on a spontaneous collaborative painting. On a blank piece of paper, Shoshanah made the first few strokes, then handed the palette and brush to Craig, who added to, played against, elaborated on what she had done. Then it was her turn again. They were doing a jazz riff in images. One of their collaborative paintings, “Homage to Black Rider,” appears in this show. Shoshanah’s work is inspired by forms in nature, biological forms, fractal patterns. Within her paintings dwell plants and animals, humans, plus creatures from the shadow side of the psyche. Craig’s paintings are more abstract; he is intrigued by things arising out of what mystics called the “plenum void,” or rather by the energetic shapes that condense into things. Both artists have chosen to work mainly on paper, Craig with acrylics, Shoshanah with gouache. Each artist appreciates the other’s ability to see beyond “consensual reality” and to celebrate the intricacy and interconnectedness of all things. In this exhibition, most paintings are hung in pairs, for reasons obvious to the artists although perhaps obscure on first glance. For example, his “Ten Thousand Things” and her “Radiant Wonder” both depict energetic forms such as wiggles and spirals dancing across luminous space. His “Just After the Beginning” and her “Blue Cocoon” burst with a proliferation of life-forms, from cells to neural networks. Eventually Shoshanah moved to Ashland, where she and Craig share their lives and various loves, including art and literature. In their living room, “Radiant Wonder” hangs next to “Ten Thousand Things.” Visitors have asked “Did you paint these after you met?” and are surprised that the paintings were created before the artists’ meeting and connecting. Viewers to the exhibition will have the opportunity to find their own connections to the two artists’ work. |
