Visual art has always been the best possible communicative vehicle for intense emotion, with the human face, so capable of strong expression, its best depicter. And one would be hard-pressed to find a fine artist who manages to grab instants of enormous emotional charge like Johanna Barthet.
Her exhibition at Camilleri Paris Mode in Rabat, held between the March 25 and the April 13, Coming Home to Me, hits the viewer with a battering ram of deep passions and a darkness portrayed that digs deep into the psyche and lingers like fingers of anxiety raking thoughts.
This is an outburst. A rebound from the depths of night into a light that blinds, but with the artist still trailing the darkness behind her.
Let me explain. For many months, I had long conversations with Johanna, who was going through an almost total artistic block, potentially the fruit of a deep depression that seems to be the bread and butter of too many artists of my acquaintance.
EuphoriaBut I do know that Johanna was really badly affected, to the point where she could not even pick up a brush – that most essential of activities for those who desperately need to express themselves visually. I know the craving well… an itch that grows into an avalanche of visual images that need to come out, but are at times walled in, intransigently barricaded away from the saving grace that is actual expression.
Johanna’s oil portraits capture the essence of feelings. None are happy feelings, because there are only rare smiles throughout. The feelings, however, run throughout the whole spectrum of emotions, even if on the darker side of things.
There is a roughness and a rawness to her style in most of the paintings, that almost borders on the impressionistic, with very broad brushstrokes and a glimpse of backdrops that would give Edvard Munch a run for his money. Most are girls and women, though there are a few boys and men strewn around the present exhibition.
Most are intimate bust shots, with a very few full figures, which are, then, crouching or sitting, so that the strength of presence that is the domain of the close shot, remains.
A few are full busts, some are cropped shots, the viewer having the chance to concentrate on puckered brows, closed eyes and anguished, sometimes sad, most time pursed mouths with full lips that continue to massage the feelings out of the images.
I love you babyShe wallows in greens and browns and the colour of skin… that is, nonetheless, greenish too at times, with yellow and red strokes that almost bring out the fibres underlying the skin, all the better to communicate in the most direct way, the raw strength of the conveyed feelings.
On entering the venue of the exhibition, visitors are met by the portrait on wood Sweet Child of Mine (1) – an unfinished work that shows that Johanna knows exactly when the most minimal of brushstrokes are needed, with not an extra one that can ruin the effect she is after. The dry brush trails hint at clothes, the foggy browns point at backgrounds, and the eyes and lips reign supreme, popping from the ornate frame as the premeditated focal points that they are.
For the past few months, I’ve been engaged in healing my inner child– Johanna Barthet
Beneath is a note that says a lot about the driving force behind this excellent exhibition, though it purports to speak only of the one painting.
“For the past few months, I’ve been engaged in healing my inner child (a bit of a buzzword, I know, but mine was desperately in need of it). It’s been a painful, yet ultimately healing experience.
“Yesterday and today, I poured blood, sweat, and tears into coaxing her out. Just as I was about to despair, there she was, staring back at me with confused eyes and a million unspoken words.
“I choose to leave this unfinished, because the journey of healing is ongoing.
“This is my tribute to her.”
The point is that the painting is as finished as it can ever be. It is complete in the sense of what it says about the drive that created it… the consumed soul, struggling to get out of a personal hell, then finally breaking loose, with brushstrokes that liberate and give life to what had been withheld for way too long. A revival of the artist’s soul, splashed for all to see.
That same raw emotion can be seen in the bare skeletons that form the base of her work… the sketches of faces, of which there are plenty in the exhibition. There are 28 thumbnail images in pencil – mostly black and white, but a few in sepia, that clearly show the thinking process behind the paintings – the seeming haphazard scribbling of the lines that, nonetheless, bring out the immediate expression.
Some faces are thoughtful, others musing, a few are bemused and angry, there is a hint of (sexual?) ecstasy in a couple, and there is even a hint of a smile on one or two, though it’s more whimsical than humour-based.
The same applies to her pencil and colour sketches on wooden plates that are also shown along with the framed paintings. An insight into the spontaneous outpouring of her artistic soul.
Hurry HomeThere are, of course, throughout, the stories. A narration of her struggle with darkness in part, and one that talks about the “new” her, reveling again in the beauty of creation.
Of particular interest are the “lotus” series of paintings, with the haggard face surfacing above the waters of a pond, with the symbolic lotus flowers all around, the visual metaphor explained by Johanna as lotus flowers rising from the mud without stains – the artist having been trapped in darkness, bursting through the veil into light, reborn in so many ways.
A wonderful set of expressive tableaux that really underscore the struggle, making this exhibition very much a themed one in which a concept is manifested in different ways.
And then there is the narrative of the ladies bearing flowers, or are surrounded by them… the diversification of the palette to reds and yellows and purples, almost an effulgence of colours amid the darker shades of the rest. There lies the hint of new-found joy and self-discovery. After the hopelessness and night, a bright day of optimism and hope.
A word on the frames. I have always noted the artist’s penchant for elaborate, baroque faming for her works. And these fit perfectly, both because they bulk the paintings, that are often quite small, and also because there is, indeed, a continuity in the frames that complete the paintings. And there is no doubt the choice is conscious.
One frame is plain, and that is the one that complements the particular pallor of the face that shines through the painting. The rest demand the intricate complexities of the framing and are made stronger for it.
These are some of my gut reactions to Johanna’s “resurrection” in art. But they are nothing but words. These are thought and emotion provoking works of art that need to be experienced in person to really be felt. If you’ve missed visiting Coming Home to Me, then seek out Johanna’s works elsewhere. You will not be disappointed.
Coming Home to Me will be on show at camilleriparismode, Rabat, until April 13. The exhibition, taking place on the store’s third floor, will be open during store hours.
