Art As Experience

Anchors Aweigh, Oil Painting by Melody Phaneuf, Private Collection
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Josef Albers said that Art is not an object but an experience. It can be both, in the same way that a theatre production might be life altering to some, but to others it’s pleasant entertainment.

My own path from appreciation for the decorative to the realm of aesthetic experience began while viewing murals from Pompeii. Bob Hunter took our group of Vesper George Art School students to see the excavated walls installed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

I recall that the scale of the room was such that the figures on the walls were life size. The subject of the murals depicted the cult of Dionysus. As I walked around the room I was conscious that the scenes seemed to blend into one another seamlessly but it wasn’t until the finale, where the emissary of Dionysus strikes the initiate that I was stunned with awe. It was only then that I understood what being “moved” by a work of art meant. My body swooned under the crack of the switch.

Determination to understand the secret of my experience drew me into many years of studying abstract relationships of imagery. Ultimately, I surmised the cause of my astonishment to be a combination of a building rhythm of arcs coupled with identification to life size figures. The effect was like a tom-tom, which culminated with a final sweeping arc of the lash in the last scene.

It is more than fair to say that the murals of Pompeii transformed my life. Until then I had seen
making art as something enjoyable, but the idea of evoking emotion, of arranging the cause of aesthetic experience became my life’s journey.

Art should at the very least, I think, ameliorate its surroundings. But the greatest art should transport us beyond ordinary experience.

Above, murals from
The Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii

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Boston Artist, Melody Phaneuf is well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists, 162 Newbury Street; at Fenway Studios, Boston by appointment; and North Shore Art in Gloucester from May through October. Phaneuf ‘s paintings have been exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Relics of The Sea

Relics Of The Sea, 32 x 24 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf
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You can hear waves still pounding from yesterday’s northeaster. I wonder what formerly hidden treasures will be discovered on the shore today, exhumed by the sea~

There is something mysterious about the painting, Relics Of The Sea. The intermediate key sets a penumbral mood. The color scheme is a transitional one, gradating watery hues. And the objects hold a silent story.

I love the idea of the ocean as symbol of the unconscious, the misty world of almost recognized, yet ineffable truths. The sea marks a threshold between the world of solidity and a fluid, elusive plane.

Finding such parallels between objects and ideas is what fascinates me about painting still life. Like distant foghorns, Relics Of The Sea echoes on both the decorative and allegorical levels.

Relics Of The Sea, 32 x 24 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf, $7500

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Boston Artist, Melody Phaneuf is well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists, 162 Newbury Street; at Fenway Studios, Boston by appointment; and North Shore Art in Gloucester from May through October. Phaneuf ‘s paintings have been exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
Online shopping at MelodyTheArtist.com/shop

Download our free 2010 Calendar
Commission a painting
Be a facebook fan of MelodyTheArtist.com
Follow MelodyTheArtist on twitter

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The Last Echo

“To give one’s heart is to give all.” ~Gandhi

Dear Reader,

As a child I loved books that began in this way. I was certain that I received the one and only special copy in the pile, or even more mysteriously, that a divine force, having seen this book was destined for me, inscribed it on route. Once the book was opened this salutation was read, I knew to settle in for a good story~

Long ago, in enchanted times and idyllic landscapes, lived the beautiful but much too chatty nymph, Echo. It was Echo’s destiny to come into opposition with the goddess Hera, who on that ill-fated day, was seeking her husband whom she feared, was delighting himself amongst the nymphs. Why, Dear Reader, did Echo detain Hera, in such foul disposition, with her endless blather? Now, doomed to repeat but never again speak her mind, the nymph wandered the dark woods in silence.

In another part of the forest the dazzling Narcissus trifled woodland nymphs with all the insouciance of one totally ignorant of karma. It was inevitable that he provoke an avenging goddess, and that he should suffer the consequence of loving without the return of affection. And all the while the Fates are busily spinning, and interweaving the threads~ Oh what, Dear Reader, shall be the end of it?

A moonlit pond, the boy is bound and crying at his reflection. And the nymph repeats and they pine away until nothing is left but an echo. And here, Dear Reader, our journey ends, but only temporarily. Woven into our lives are they that are meant to transform our hearts and souls forever.

~

The Last Echo, 20 x 25 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf~ Private collection, Florida

Melody Phaneuf is a Boston Artist, working at Fenway Studios. Phaneuf is well known for her evocative still life and landscape paintings and has achieved significant acclaim for portraiture. She has exhibited at Galerie Herouet in Paris, The National Arts Club in New York City, and with Art du Monde, a traveling exposition in Japan. Phaneuf’s paintings are regularly displayed at the Guild of Boston Artists, 162 Newbury Street, Boston, MA.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo showcases the artist’s original paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards. Online ordering at MelodyTheArtist.com/shop

Follow Melody on twitter
Become a facebook fan
Visit Melody’s studio
Commission a painting by Melody

Related Links~

• Echo and Narcissus
• Karma
• Transformation Stories

The Gambler~ Dreams of The Jester

Emerging from a long and darkened corridor, I enter the space, unnoticed. Halted by voices, I quietly peer into a chamber illuminated by firelight. Where am I? I should flee but am captivated by knowing.

The Jester faces me. He is intent on the hand he is playing, and does not regard my presence. I can see the opponent’s hand. I want to have a sense of how the game is going and slowly, inaudibly, move my position to see the opponent’s expression. I am aghast to see my own face!

What fascinating state dreaming is. For many years I kept journals of my nightly escapades. I documented and illustrated the events, endeavoring to capture the emotional quality of each dream experience. Colors were vivid, and lighting always distinct. Many of these entries were transformed into paintings, etchings, and artist books.

I don’t gamble in my day-life but the Jester recurs in my dreams. Sometimes he is leading a group of followers; sometimes he is alone. I always find myself in the position of the observer and can’t seem to have direct contact with him. In this case, I am observing both the Jester and myself. So~ if I am in the scene, who is the one watching? If I am the one watching, who is in the scene?

Melody Phaneuf's paintings have been exhibited at Galerie Herouet in Paris, The National Arts Club in New York City, and were included in a traveling exposition in Japan. Her work is regularly displayed at the Guild of Boston Artists, 162 Newbury Street, Boston, MA. Melody is a member of the Fenway Studios Cooperative, a community of Boston artists whose historic north light building was modeled on the 19th century Parisian Ateliers. Studio visits are welcomed.

Gambler II, Oil Painting, 16 x 20, Private Collection

Gambler II, Open Edition Print, Note Cards and Bookmarks are available at MelodyTheArtist.com/shop

About the Jester and Dreams~

• The Court Jester
• The Jester's Political Significance
• The Importance of Dreams
• Dreams and Jung
• Recalling Dreams

Fortune’s Wheel, In Memory of September 11

It is August of 1997 and I am returning from an exhibition of my paintings in Paris. It is the fulfillment of a dream and I am heady, making great plans the way one does when still young and unscathed. I couldn’t have painted this at that particular moment because I was brimming with joy.

I call it Fortune’s Wheel. It is about sudden and violent change, the kind of event where one is irrevocably transformed. It is a self-portrait in symbols; a cathartic detachment from what immediately becomes the past. The jester hangs upside down by one foot, echoing the Hanged man of the Tarot. Like breadcrumbs leading out of the woods, three cards, the Tower, Devil, and Three of Swords leave a trail of clues. An ominous black veil obscures the exhibition poster yoking the jester to the wheel where once fresh roses ascend. Flameless candle, well-worn and treasured map of France, postcard, and coins are strewn. The hourglass sand is running out, the duality of light bewilders, disorder rules.

Fast forward to 2001. It is a crisp and beautifully sunny morning in September, emblem of early autumn in New England. I am working with a handful of students studying anatomy, looking out the window, thinking we really should be out landscape painting. It is shortly before 9:00. The first plane is flying into the towers.

We are changed। We were still young and unscathed. We were heady, brimming with joy, and could not have imagined in advance of that particular moment, this altered world.

Fortune’s Wheel by Melody Phaneuf, 40 x 48 Oil Painting
http://melodytheartist.com

Love and Folly

In the wake of the speech by Republican candidate Sarah Palin, I feel compelled to report that I liked her. Such confidence and feisty glint of eye! I love that she, mere woman, is fearless to take on the powerful, lipstick being the only factor differentiating her from pit-bull.

The admiring glances and blazing cheers from women in the convention center left no doubt that Sarah Palin is winning hearts. I believe that she is earnest. I believe that she is zealous in her intention. But I don’t believe in the mantra, “Drill, Baby, Drill” or that the answer is to cleave to religion and guns.

In Love And Folly, manikins act out a scene in which the infatuated one is unabashedly kicked to the curb. The “fool,” characterized by the jester’s hat is dazed, completely unprepared for such rejection. Above the fool’s head, a lock symbolizes the perceived bond of the two but the torn Lovers card and the second sprung lock reveal the truth. A hand from above holds the card of betrayal.

I could don my jester’s hat and follow the woman who may become vice-president because I love that she is a woman, and feisty, and unafraid. But the charm would be broken when I woke up to find that I had denied something that was there all along; that I had elected a leader with whom I morally cannot agree.


L’Amour Et La Folie, Melody Phaneuf
Oil Painting, 24 x 28
http://melodytheartist.com