Page 15 - the NOISE January 2014

Alice by cover artist Erica Vhay, is among the artist’s portraits now found at her new gallery space on Heritage Square.
BY
SARAH GIANELLI
CoMPoSiNG tHe StRoNG & tHe SLiGHt
Erica Vhay’s painterly style matches the mood of her subject matter. In Break Room, her brush strokes are as bold and challenging as the woman jauntily tossing her head back while taking a long pull off a cigarette. They are as playful and dashing as the Parisian woman skipping and laugh- ing in the rain. They are appropriately soft and muted for the shyer femininity of the woman sitting cross-legged, looking demurely to the side in Your Kitchen this Morning — but whose ballerina physique suggests strength and flexibility even in her modesty.
In other pieces, the powerful bonds of female friendship are celebrated, as in Old Crones where a cluster of women are absorbed in conversation — are they gos- siping or casting spells? In Red Cloak, an al- most archetypal woman stands in staunch profile, suggesting woman’s self-reliance. While not strictly women, and although Ms. Vhay does not state it as her conscious intent, this series of portraits is testament to the whole spectrum of femininity in all its strength and vulnerability.
The most compelling aspect of Ms. Vhay’s portraits is that most of her subjects do not seem aware of a witness — as if a snapshot either took them by surprise or was taken surreptitiously. They are often looking off elsewhere, lost in contempla- tion or dance; sleeping soundly, or de- picted from behind with an exposed back or pulling back hair, so the viewer feels al- most guiltily voyeuristic to be privy to such intimate moments. This lends a poignancy
to Ms. Vhay’s work — one feels protective of these women but at the same time has the sense they don’t need protecting.
Unlike her still life paintings of florals and edibles, for which Ms. Vhay is pre- dominantly known, for her portraits she works from vintage photographs because they are about capturing a moment in time, which makes it more difficult to work with models. She also likes how old pho- tographs often contain a story.
“I am drawn to images with strong com- position, negative spaces and contrast,”she says. “Sometimes the images I am drawn to are the awkward moments between ac- tions. I’ve been doing figurative work and figure drawing since college. In those days I had more of an interest in sculpture and print making, but the figure was always of interest. For me, the figure is the most challenging and rewarding. In my work, I try to capture a single moment in time and the emotion that goes with it. I would like my viewers to feel what the person in the painting was feeling, and to relate to that feeling from their own life. Hopefully they will be able to see the beauty in a moment that hasn’t been noticed or considered beautiful before.”
In Shift Change, one of the few men in this series is pulling off his shirt, revealing his back. It is a surprisingly resonating im- age, possibly because it captures a deft, fluid motion we’ve all seen, but rarely had the opportunity to gaze at — and there is something very human and touching about it.
“When I come across an image of a man in a great composition, I enjoy painting
men as well,” says Ms. Vhay. “I loved paint- ing Shift Change so much I had to paint it twice. But women are so beautiful and more fun to paint. There are a lot of issues that women are dealing with now — with trying to work, raise kids, take care of the house and partners — basically do it all. I feel women are not appreciated for their complexity and underlying beauty. Mostly our culture is interested in making women look a certain way. It is rewarding to cap- ture some of the emotion and unseen beauty that goes along with these issues. Friendships between women is also very important and has been the theme of some of my paintings.”
Ms. Vhay is part of a long line of archi- tects and artists — her great-grandfather Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln Bor- glum were renowned for their hand in sculpting Mt. Rushmore.
“My interest in sculpture goes back to being around his sculptures in my Grand- mother Nona’s house. There was a bust of a little girl named Phillis in the center of her dining room table that was always fascinating to me. He eventually became a painter as well, and those paintings and their compositions around me as a child influenced my own compositions.”
Ms. Vhay has changed mediums almost as many times as she has moved around the country. Born in Idaho, she obtained an undergraduate degree in ceramics from the University of Oregon in Eugene, where, at that time, her focus was pottery, sculp- ture and drawing. In Boulder, she took up graphic design, and later moved to Montana where she began sketching and
painting in earnest. In 2006, after a brief stint in Phoenix working in web design, she, her husband Darryl Brown (founder of 2B Design which shares Ms. Vhay’s new gallery space) and two small boys landed in Flagstaff.
“I still enjoy sculpture and ceramics,” she says. “If I had all the time in the world I would do sculpture and painting. I consid- er myself an artist — each medium is just another language to work in.”
She switched to painting when her chil- dren were born because she could do it at home. Not only did the birth of her chil- dren affect her choice of medium, it also added depth to her expression.
“It has made me a more empathetic person which has helped me capture more emotion in my painting,” she says.
“Having kids has taught me to take my- self less seriously — including my art. And the letting go only helps the work.” A frequently rotating selection of the art- ist’s work — portraits, florals, edibles and landscapes — can be found at The Vhay Gallery, 107 N. San Francisco Ave. Suite 3. A small selection is on display at Gallery One13, 111 E. Aspen Avenue, #2.
Ms. Vhay will also be featured in “(un)Still Life,” a new exhibition at Coconino Center for the Arts which runs through February, and explores the anecdotal commonality of the human experience through the me- dium of paint. The opening reception for
“(un)Still Life” is Saturday, January 11 from 6-8 PM at 2300 N. Fort Valley Road in Flag- staff, Arizona. For more information call (928) 779-2300.
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