At Elaine Erickson’s Gallery a few blocks west, the exhibition “Steve Lubahn: Inner Demons and Daemons” opened. Lubahn speaks to his admirers at the Friday night reception as a young husband who finally realized a focus for his artwork. Large-scale figurative drawings, often from a distorted or unusual viewpoint, rendered in graphite, ink and china maker, a black, waxy crayon, become his works on paper he then glazes with a thin varnish.
Similar to Langlois, Lubahn and his artwork coexist in his life as if connected through one purpose. He also draws directly onto the paper without any preparatory work, sketching or references. His models, primarily his family and friends, as he says, “Become the catalyst for everything.”
He continues by explaining, “Any preliminary concept kills it [the image] for any meaningful relationships [on the drawing]. I immerse myself in the process and allow the image to breathe.”
In explaining this process further, Lubahn comments that he usually starts with larger paper, sometimes pieced together if necessary, and then “crops out what shouldn’t be there…until the essence of what should be there appears.”
Whether on monumental scale drawings or miniature images, faces twist and turn, may remain hidden, arise from a bed of text, pushpins, seed pods or spoons, to imbue the drawings with unique textural quality. Images he draws that involve metaphor as opposed to symbolism, similar to how Langlois views her fantastical landscapes expressed through magical realism. Lubahn indicates he visualizes on paper an inner world that will evoke or stimulate a visceral energy, an energy that he would like “to stay alive.”
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
For Lubahn, an image “stays alive” when the viewer can interpret or imagine [the drawings] on their own, which to Lubahn then keeps this image fresh and breathing, as he would name it. Exemplified in Lubahn’s painting Carbonated Ectoplasm, an image that he claims attempts to personify “everything that’s bubbling up from within, the visceral activity inside the body.”
His paintings explore the inner world from viewing an exterior physical image which deals with human psychology, interior energy or interpreting that inner energy in an outward motion. In some way, Lubahn expresses that each painting becomes a self portrait even though he might use other faces for the vehicle to express this inner world. Other exhibition paintings reflect his passionate interest in ornithology, or the study of birds, which he developed as a person who reviews rare bird records for the state. Each specific subject creates that unique focus for Lubahn, similar to Costa Rica and its lush terrain that inspires Langlois.
For Lubahn and Langlois, a personal existence devoid of art would be a miserable place to inhabit and live within. Art for each of these individuals shares a meaningful experience with the world outside themselves, despite the great differences in subject and medium. Lubahn sums this up when he says, “[art is] how I balance myself as a human being and the ideas are always present, where one is continually conscious of the work.”
Tory Folliard Gallery presents: “Flora Langlois: Fantasy and other Earthly Delights” through October 5 or visit www.toryfolliardgallery.com. Elaine Erickson Gallery presents “Steve Lubahn: Inner Demons and Daemons” through October 13 or visit www.eericksongallery.com
