Patty Wickman at Hunsaker/Schlesinger

Art in America, Oct, 2002 by Michael Duncan

Moments of spiritual revelation proved ideal subject matter for Renaissance artists, providing opportunities to paint highly dramatic settings heightened by evocative symbols and shafts of brilliant light. In her new body of work, Los Angeles painter Patty Wickman updates that theme, depicting revelatory moments in suburban American backyards and bedrooms. In the past decade, Wickman has defined her own style of rendering photographic images as paintings, using as a compositional device the subtle mixing of passages of meticulous, fully colored depictions with others more sketchily painted or loosely drawn. She often leaves visible under-painting and fragments of preliminary drawing, emphasizing her paintings' facture and directing attention to the more articulated drama center-stage.

Summons (2000-01) is Wickman's most successful work to date, offering a disturbing, paradoxical allegory of spiritual commitment. In this work, a small rowboat holding a standing teenaged girl who faces three girlfriends is about to be engulfed by a rising ocean wave. Thin, vigorous brushwork animates the wave, whose power is heightened by crisp, all pervasive morning light. The plainly dressed leader seems in command of her acolytes--one awestruck, one placid, one quizzically leaning in--who seem oblivious to the impending crash. The plain-wrapper cast of adolescent characters grounds the understated Christian allegory, enticing viewers into contemplation of a summons to faith.

Overshadowed (2001) presents a complex twist on the traditional theme of the Annunciation. Squatting in her underwear in a cluttered bedroom, a teenaged girl gazes into the glaring light of a shadeless lamp while making a shadow-puppet bird with her hands. The girl's cautious expression indicates her half-awareness of the gesture as a symbol of her puberty and impending adulthood. The gawky girl seems too big for her bunk bed; her clothes spill out of the child-scale dresser. The Virgin's dramatic realization that she has been chosen to be the mother of Christ--usually announced visually through the symbol of the heavenly dove--is here conflated with a more familiar American mythic event: the adolescent loss of innocence.

Outside the Garden (1999-2000) loosely evokes traditional renderings of saints undergoing their initial conversion experiences--most notably Paul on the road to Damascus. In a humble backyard, a shirtless older man splashed with mud from gardening staggers, seemingly surprised by afternoon light. As if suddenly beckoned, he reaches up, gazing over his shoulder into the glare. Wickman's moments of revelation occur out of the blue. Her paintings seek to emulate sacred epiphanies, enticing viewers to experience new ways of seeing the world.