Fiona Rae | The Brooklyn Rail

It’s difficult for a viewer to know where to begin and what to follow in these recent compositions. The passages are quite diffuse. That’s where the dreams emerge—a stream of consciousness with interruptions. Art historical allusions include Philip Guston’s dotted lines as guides to following the paintings’ internal evolution. There is magic in the gesture as Rae brings a brushstroke to objecthood—in effect, an indefinable structure that can be perceived as sculpture. These component images in the paintings appear as if they could be picked up from above and transported elsewhere in the work. She maintains a cauldron of associations, including her own images from the past and her materials. She keeps samples of her gestures and paint colors laid out on canvas for future reference. Rae seems to be figuring it all out as she goes along, sweeping over the work of artists such as de Kooning, as she reaches out for light in these recent paintings and drawings, abandoning the Victorian fathomless darkness in her paintings of the 1990s. She accumulates and lets the pieces establish relations to the world and to one another. “Source imagery,” she revealed to The Guardian, “can come from anywhere, although I'm still hooked on Dürer’s ‘Apocalypse’ woodcuts for the way he uses line so inventively to describe dragons and demons, patches of grass and cloudbursts.” Who could guess?

For some, these newer paintings on white grounds may come off as slightly uncomfortable, unresolved and hard to place. The nostalgia that pastels may evoke can seem too lyrical or dated, but as she noted in an interview for the Tate museum, anything that has existed has the potential to feel dated or out of time. “Is poetic always old-fashioned? I hope not.” An apt conclusion, indeed.