IRVING PETLIN

© IRVING PETLIN

COLLECTION 2018

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Irving Petlin
Mythology and the Island
Exhibition at A Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, August 2014

I first came to Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1977 and have produced a considerable body of work there every summer since then. Maybe it’s the apartness of an island, the fact it’s surrounded by water that invites the mythological, the magical, more easily to take hold, and enter imagination and memory – this has certainly been true for me over the past 36 summers.

In preparing this exhibition, three strands of imagery emerged : the Cottage, the Boat and the Island. The resulting group of pastels is an exploration of the transformation of the ordinary into the mythic.

The four « Cottage » pastels ‘picture’ my immeasurable personal attachment to to it, an actual place. Each work explores its mythic ‘appearance’, ‘disappearance’ and ‘evaporation’. This little wood frame house, surrounded by trees, sky, children and a boat, becomes my voice.

« The Boat » A boat appears often in my work. A simple form becomes a metaphor for the wanderers, the door to the sea. In the dyptich, the boat is intertwined with the fate of the planet, as the ancient Egyptian goddess spins her top determining who wins, who loses.

In « Portrait of Queequeg and the Boat », Queequeg peers down into the « Pequod », riddled and struggling.

« The Island » This group of four pastels is a symbolic representation of the four seasons : ‘Winter Sun’, ‘Night Sun’, ‘Fate of the Island’ and ‘Lovers, Summer Storm’ . The island is a giant rock, rendered up close in a reversal of perspective, a mythic apparition.

© A Gallery MV 2019