Joan Sharma – California Contemporary Art Collective – “Edges” FAM, January 2012
By Sky Sweet
I was running late and out of breath, excited to finally see my friend’s highly publicized “Edges” exhibit at the Fresno Art Museum. When I reached the second room of “Edges,” I quickly glanced at all five paintings of Joan Sharma’s work; I was immediately pulled in by the strong and vital color palate. The colors range from light orange and pale shades of melon green to vibrant turquoise and stormy midnight blues. Splashes of vibrant reds and molten orange grabbed my attention from several portions of the different canvases. It’s obvious that the use of color plays an important role in Joan’s work. All five paintings are placed together along one wall of the gallery and I took them in rather quickly, believing that I had “seen” the exhibit.
Feeling that my friend’s work deserved more than a cursory glance, I slowed down and stood quietly in front of each painting and began to see a common pattern and sense of movement and energy emerge that united her pieces as a whole. Walking along slowly from one canvas to the next, I see paintings that are open and bold and yet luminous and ethereal. They clearly represent some interior chamber of the emotional realm or of the psyche. Each painting expresses some vital force of movement, as if the wind itself swirled and blew through the oil paint, lifting it off the canvass to capture the eddy and churn of the wind and allowing it to be preserved momentarily as if being photographed. This is especially true of the pieces entitled Mrityunjaya (2010) and SOTA (2011). I felt as though Joan captured the mystery of the wind in these two shimmering paintings. Then it dawns on me that these paintings represent the energy moving through interior space. They seem to reflect a whirlwind of the energetic space within each of us. That incredible space located within when one calms their mind and regulates their breath; that deep and vast interior space that meditators and yogis plunge into mining for their ‘True Selves.’ I was surprised and intrigued to discover that these ethereal paintings represented for me that mystical, internal world.
As I continued to reflect on the individual paintings, taking in the colors and the movement of each one I began to sense a vibratory quality emanating from the painting corresponding to my chakras. Chakras centers can be visualized as a moving, whirling, vortex of vibration, light and energy or life force; and that’s when I realized that’s exactly what I was seeing expressed in Joan’s art. I practice yoga; a lot of yoga on a regular basis. I am fairly familiar with the energy centers located vertically in the body referred to as ‘Chakras.’ At one point, I turned to Joan exclaiming, ‘Joan, I can feel these paintings move! They vibrate!’ She smiled. Apparently, that was her intention. What I didn’t mention to her right away was that I could feel the energy of each painting vibrate along my own chakras. I could feel the specific center points of her paintings correspond to my own chakras. Of course, I thought I was imagining this, but Joan seemed pleased that I had caught on to the energy fields emanating from her art.
Now, with a deeper understanding, I stood in front of each canvas once again, and felt that I was being moved energetically, on a much more subtle and understated level (something that I completely disregarded with my first glance of her work). The paintings, Core (2011), and The Field (2011) clearly expressed that pulsing movement, although all 5 pieces embody the sense of movement and vibration. Both paintings, Mrityunjaya and SOTA have a quality of movement that begins in the lower chakra region and moves steadily upward which is the common understanding that the chakra system moves energy inward and upwards, always seeking to move energy up.
In a sense, viewing Joan’s work is an experiment in viewing a glimpse, a visual expression of our interior energetic world. Perhaps the more one has cultivated awareness or has a regular ‘practice’ of going within; these paintings may resonate on a deeper level. Joan has said that the concepts or themes expressed in her art are still driven by an idea that came to her years ago, and that she is still working out, and seeking to express. These are deep and wonderful paintings that are dynamic and fresh in their interpretation of the Mystical always present in our lives. I encourage anyone who views them, to be sure to take their time, and “feel” the paintings as well as viewing them. It’s not often that I have experienced a painting speak to me on an energetic level as well as a visual one. For me, the “edges” expressed in her work, are the energy edges we move and dance around consciously and unconsciously on a regular basis, fielding the edges the great life force within each of us. Joan has dynamically captured that “edge.”