Lorraine Tady at Barry Whistler - Dallas - abstract painting and sculpture exhibition - Brief Article

Lorraine Tady motivates herself by asking questions as she paints, posing problems or suggesting scenarios to see where they will lead. Talking about recent large abstractions, she reports that she had wondered if she could make a painting of painted lines, or if she could make lines without painting them. Looking at the dense gray and brown abstractions that resulted and the streaks and patches of color that shoot light through the compositions, you can see lines of paint so thick that they almost become shapes. Other lines occur as if by accident when one color area partially covers another. This description makes the paintings sound dry and technical, but they are not. They are brainy, for sure, and show a knotted determination to work themselves out in full view of the observer. But another question Tady asks herself suggests the more improvisational aspect of the works: as her abstract shapes pile up and suggest structures, she begins to wonder, she says, what that "thing" might look like from behind or above.

Drawings provide one format for realizing experiments in point-of-view shifting, and a dozen large drawings in this exhibition offered variations on Tady's themes. But for the past several years, sculpture has also been an option. Her wooden sculptures look like what might tumble onto the floor if you grabbed hold of the tangle of lines in one of her paintings and pulled really hard. Made from scrap lumber with occasional bits of sheet metal, partially painted by the artist or with marks remaining from the lumber's original use, these sculptures give Tady free rein to explore the shapes implied by the paintings.

The sculptures have become ships during the two years she has worked on them. Early on, a few seemed to have certain nautical references. In this exhibition, the gallery floor resembled a crowded marina with an unlikely array of vessels, among them a tall ship, a tugboat, a destroyer, a cruise ship and others. The one reference these works never make is to a toy shop or a modeler's workshop. As you walked among them, or straddled them, or squatted down beside one, you saw a constantly shifting display of Tady's abstract paintings and drawings rendered in two-by-fours, dowels and plywood. Returning to the paintings after spending time with the sculpture, you realized that on canvas and paper as well as in wood, Tady is a builder, and the things she builds are smart and sturdy and a pleasure to look at.

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