The work of Rebecca Salter – some of which is on exhibit through May 1 at the Yale University Art Gallery (“Rebecca Salter and Japan”) – is grounded in the natural world. So are the painted abstractions of local artist Emilia Dubicki, who also has the same gift as Salter for making a minimum of line reveal everything.
Here’s how the conversation went when we stopped in front of Salter’s Untitled RR26, a 2009 mixed media work on paper:
Rebecca Salter, Untitled RR26, 2009.
Stephen Kobasa: This drawing is spectacular…really breathtaking.
Emilia Dubicki: It is…it’s just so light and deep at the same time. It’s like somebody just flung a little, light net into the air…
SK: Or one of those nets that traps Agamemnon so that he can be slaughtered…oh, wait a minute…it’s the gift…I know what it is…it’s Greek, too…it’s in Medea, when she’s abandoned by her husband… He takes another wife and she sends her a gift .. .a veil.
ED: She can’t get out of it?
SK: Well, it’s poisoned, like wearing fire…
ED: No…this is much lighter…this would dissipate in the air
SK: You think there’s no threat here…
ED: Whatever it’s made out of…
SK: Gossamer, mere gossamer.
ED: …It would vaporize
SK: Well, this is just good…it’s the ink finding its way across the paper. But she…it’s her HAND…
ED: It’s very much of the moment…it’s there right now and it could be gone momentarily.
SK: She also knows when to stop here…the blank spaces within the drawing and outside of it…if this was the only thing they showed it would have been worthwhile. I actually didn’t expect to be as interested as I am in this…part of it was that sometimes there’s a subtlety that’s too great for my discipline. A piece like this…you really have to stay with it…a glance is useless.
ED: It would be nice to have it be the only thing you could look at and not be distracted by all of the other things you want to see.
SK; You mean be in prison with it?
ED: No, I mean look at it and not look at it…have it look at you.
SK: There is something about scratches on the cell wall here…
ED: The artist wanting to get out?
SK: There’s a lot that’s private in her work…I don’t always know what the way in is…I can only stay on the surface…maybe I am too desperate for content.
ED: For me it’s always “how much do I want to think about this?” I just want to look at it.
SK: Well, you’re a working artist…but it’s one thing to draw on Japanese paper; it’s another to take on that culture as a model. I think one is always an outsider…maybe that’s what’s attractive to it. All this about the Japanese goal of imperfection…you’re going to get it anyway.
ED: There is a sort of diligence in drawing…to be drawn to a piece like this is to be drawn to that diligence, the skill. There’s more breathing room here, there’s more air.
SK: I like it when I can see her hand more clearly…giving the ink over to the paper. Looking at it again, I still think you miss something by leaving it without the potential for harm.
ED: I miss something?
SK: … You’re all Midsummer Night’s Dream…I suppose I go too far in the other direction.
ED: Yeah, I don’t see any heaviness in that at all
SK: Well it’s not heaviness…That’s what makes it so interesting as a threat because it won’t give any warning; its very attractiveness makes it the ideal instrument.
ED: Well, like a net your interpretation can take any shape…but the drawing could be deceiving us, it could.