Collaboration Sets Artists Free

Two trees stand side by side, their shapes and surfaces rendered in energetic detail. They’re dark against the dazzling lights that seem to pass through them. Knowing that these vibrant images are part of a collaborative exhibit by two artists — Nancy Mooslin and Susan Newbold — the viewer might think that the resemblances happened because the artists traded notes, or possibly even worked with their easels side by side. The truth is that the artists’ work is even more intertwined. Mooslin, who is based in California, and Newbold, who is based in New Haven, are old friends. And they decided to collaborate not only by making pieces that worked well together, but by working on the very same pieces together. Both trees are the products of both their hands.

Mooslin and Newbold created the pieces in ​“Lattitudes” — running now at City Gallery on Upper State Street through Sept. 29 — sometimes by visiting each other and working side by side and sometimes by shipping the pieces back and forth in the mail. The two friends had reasons to believe that such an intense artistic collaboration would work. ​“They shared an interest in the patterns found in the details of nature,” their joint artistic statement reads. ​“Often these details were site specific to the areas in which they lived or traveled. Additionally mixed media has been the vocabulary of choice for both artists.”

Along the way, they discovered the liberating compromises of collaboration. ​“A successful collaboration requires one to lay aside personal ego and any preconceived idea of what the outcome will be. Also required is receptivity to new approaches and new ways of using media. During the collaborative process totally unique ideas and images emerge that would not happen in the solo creative process. There is a cross fertilization of ideas and mediums which creates the opportunity to learn from each other.”

The artists’ understandings of their shared aesthetic territory is borne out in their solo work. In the show are Newbold’s VT Waterfall …

… and Mooslin’s Ganges River/Hindu Chant. In addition to the subject matter, there are formal similarities, such as a predilection for vibrant color, a penchant for texture and detail. But there are differences in brush stroke, in how the artists handle their paint. In addition, the exhibit’s accompanying notes reveal that many of Mooslin’s works are a visual depiction of music, with specific colors assigned to specific pitches. ​“The system overlays the 12-hue color scale and the 12 notes in an octave of music. Further, meter is represented by measurement and timbre is described by texture and shape.” The colors in the painting of the water of the Ganges River were determined by the notes in the Hindu chants Mooslin heard when she was there. ​“The intent is to have the music floating on the water.”

With key differences between the two artists and Mooslin’s own system of working, there are, in short, many ways for the collaboration to fail. But the work shows the opposite. In a heady array of 36 small paintings, one can visualize the give and take between the two artists, the way they put their talents side by side, then combined them to create something new. Some of the paintings are credited to Mooslin. Others are credited to Newbold. And several of them are full-on collaborations.

Some parts of the array read almost as visual representations of the process that led them to collaborate — the crackling conversations, the bursting forth of ideas, some used, and some cast aside, but all for the sake of creating new pieces of art.

The four paintings together in the lower-right corner of the array, meanwhile, let us see the result. The upper left painting is Newbold’s, called Twin Beaches. The lower left is Mooslin’s, called Kauai. Both are depictions of seascapes, rendered in clear, sure hands. The paintings on the right are the collaborations. They share the same subject: the upper right one is titled River Rhythms and the lower right one is called The River. But both are departures from the styles of the paintings on the left. In the collaborative process, the artists moved away from the styles in which they were secure. They moved toward something more abstract, something a little riskier. The lessons they learned from each other also made their brushes a little more free.

“Lattitudes” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Sept. 29. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.