Varied facets of experience reflect in the work of two artists showing work at the Jazz Gallery in Riverwest. One, Karen Fischberg, is finishing a degree at MIAD, the other, Sandra Wyss, is a seasoned professional who has worked in illustration and graphic design for 20 years. Together, their art forms the exhibition “Collections: Journeys/Journals.”
Wyss, who studied at UW-Milwaukee and MATC, paints images from travels and various locations like making scrapbook pages on canvases heavily laden with paint. A picture like Roma Bakery is one such vignette. The composition is entirely taken over by a storefront window and shelves of implied goodies. Wyss’ brushstrokes freely build thickly on the surface, making forms that imply delightful things like cannoli or pastries. However, this is only a suggestion as the details are less important than an overall sense of brightness and color. The artist cites Chaime Soutine and German Expressionists among her influences, and the connection is made through her high-keyed palette, broad strokes and scumbled surfaces.
Wyss’ style is unselfconscious, with a candid and free approach that feels improvisational and unstudied. In contrast, Karen Fischberg’s work has a sense of careful order and control, even in abstract pieces that take after the marks of Cy Twombly. Scrawled lines move toward the character of language yet remain in the realm of non-representation. She also looks to the poetry of John Keats as prompting her triptych La Belle Dame Sans Merci—a floating combination of amorphous shapes and lines in oil paint, oil stick and graphite in washes of color that combine mysterious landscapes with underwater weightlessness. This is even more acute in Mist, a tall painting where elongated blue shadows seem to rise and flicker into a ground of pale green and orange. It is evocative and something like a spectral forest. Mindscape is an impressive piece, where a desert seems to emerge in transparent layers of circular dunes, punctuated by slight forms in primary colors and an emphatic blob of impasto green paint. It is a bold but still controlled gesture.
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Through July 23 at Jazz Gallery, 926 E. Center St.
