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15/7/2005

Caught

Richard Kraft Gallery, Los Angeles

Works by Pam Hawkes and Yvette M. Brown

In a city like Los Angeles the mere mention of a knife and the age of 40 for most women means the gowned cosmetic surgeon working his own special voodoo. But, there¹s no cosmetic hype about these women, as the miracles they conjure up are with their own knifeŠ...the Œpalette¹ kind! Pam Hawkes, from Birmingham, England and Yvette M. Brown, from Los Angeles both started to paint after reaching the age of 40. They are bringing their unique perspective to the LA art scene in a two-woman show entitled 'Caught' opening July 16th, 2005 at the Richard Kraft Gallery in West Los Angeles.

In Yvette's case it really is a different perspective, as her paintings depict cropped and contorted bodies falling through space as seen from shifted viewpoints. Recently she has begun to break the figures up onto multi-canvas constructions of varying depths. Viewed front-on, they seem deceptively two-dimensional; but when viewed from any other angle they give the figures a three-dimensional quality that further distorts the image and pushes the plane of perspective in a way that simply cannot be captured on a flat canvas. There is a tremendous amount of kinetic energy on display in Yvette's work, from the athleticism of the figures to the way the fabric with which they are draped seems to almost come alive. Sometimes the effect is explosive, at other times serene ­ but it is always uniquely captivating

. A self-taught artist, Yvette works in oil on canvas. She draws inspiration from her years growing up as a trick skateboarder, gymnast and SoCal surf chick, as well as her 20-year career in fashion and wardrobe design. Pam Hawkes decided to go back to college at the age of 40 and took a three-year Master of Arts degree course in Fine Art. Up until then she had not painted, ever. During the course she realized her skill in painting and began to take it seriously and decided that a career as an artist was for her.

Pam has a completely different but complementary approach to Yvette, as she concentrates her work on figures too, but each one is completely still, serene and calmly disturbing. Her application of oils and color is completely different too. Pam's work is of portraits and figures that are reminiscent of the Northern European Dutch masters, but there is no plagiarism here as each painting has a haunting quality and an air about it that is painterly, but contemporary at the same time. Her portraits almost have a still-life air about which contrasts nicely with the movement of Yvette's work. The themes are thought-provoking as in Å’Falling', where the kneeling figure of a serenely statuesque woman in a beautiful gold ball-gown has a taut red rope attached to her wrist that runs off the edge of the painting.

Another has a woman seated behind a lace curtain gazing profoundly at four apples suspended like a pyramid from a thin string in front of her. Pam loves the physicality of paint and tries wherever possible to use Renaissance mediums like Venice turpentine, gesso, stand oil, pigments and wax and experimenting in those mediums to make her paintings glow. From gesso to actual gold foil she painstakingly applies and over-glazes; some with wax that is then distressed as if the painting has been hanging in a doge¹s palace for a hundred years. To see them in real-life one perceives the actual texture of the work.

In some works this is even carried over to custom frames with fragments of text that echo the emotional response. Pam and Yvette would have, in all likelihood, continued separately along their similar career paths, if not for the fortuitous intervention of Lisa Starke, another woman who also began her career in art after the age of 40.

Lisa became acquainted with Pam Hawkes through her recent marriage to Geoff Brown, a British videogame entrepreneur, who had already begun to collect Pam¹s work. She knew Yvette through friends, but was unaware of her artistic talents until Yvette invited her to attend her first gallery show. In a moment of inspiration, Lisa realized that there was something special in the way these two very different women had come to such a similar point in their lives and their work. And she knew she had to find a way of bringing that work to a larger audience.

Working with Geoff, she subsequently set up a virtual gallery on the web to promote and sell the works at <http://www.starkebrown.com> . The initial response has been excellent and private clients and designers have been able to view the works at their leisure as well as browse the whole collection online. Paintings are then brought to the homes or offices of interested clients who can view them in situ.

The upcoming gallery show will give a larger audience the chance to see and be inspired by the work of these two up-and-coming ³young² artists, who just happen to be over 40. It may not be the kind of makeover that makes it on reality TVŠbut that¹s not really such a bad thing, is it?

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 6-9pm

Richard Kraft Gallery
3871, Grandview Avenue, West Los Angeles

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