A little obsessed with a new passion

BOBBIE ALLEN

Think for a moment about how you identify the artist responsible for

a certain work on sight. How do you know the difference between, say,

a painting of tree done by Van Gogh versus one done by Monet? The raw

materials are the same, the subject is the same (a willow tree

perhaps), yet the way these two artists interpreted what they saw is

vastly different.

Style is expression of artistic vision, then. But what about

technical skill? What if your vision bumps up against limits in your

abilities or knowledge? You have to learn how to make it happen. The

determination to break through these limitations can define the

difference between a dabbler and a true artist.

Rachel Uchizono is self-taught, and has only been painting for

three years (on view at Studio 7 Gallery, 384-B N. Coast Highway).

Inspiration to pick up a brush came from the rather surrealist

landscapes of Christiane Kubrick’s work, featured in her more famous

husband’s film, “Eyes Wide Shut.”

“I could do that,” Uchizono thought. So she did.

She is a landscape painter, working with oils exclusively, and has

managed in three years of intense study to develop her own painterly

voice.

She is apologetic about this. “I’m obsessed,” she says, “I paint a

lot. All day.” She says this as if it explains how she managed it,

but is quick to state, “Style can’t be taught. I had a certain look

from day one.”

A canvas titled “Laguna Wilderness Park” (24x30, oil on canvas)

proclaims this immediately. Here is the familiar sloping canyon hill,

with low oaks and shrubs. But there is a certain quality in her color

mixes.

The hazy distant blues of the background are both deep and bright;

but they maintain their distance from our point of interest: the deep

shadows underneath the trees.

The brightness of the vague distant hills establishes a quality of

California light familiar to all in Laguna Beach: the fading haze at

the moment when the sun emerges can linger on the hilltops, diffusing

light in the distance while shining brightly on the spot where you’re

standing.

Uchizono’s canvases thus express a great range of light and

distance. The composition of “Laguna Wilderness Park” is careful, but

not deliberate. The eye wanders from the distant hills to the shadows

under the trees.

The range of greens is natural without the stiff photographic

quality often found in landscape painting. That desire to be overly

true to what the eye is seeing makes such works cartoonish,

interchangeable, and in the end disposable. You forget them as soon

as you walk away from them because they have no life of their own. In

the end, you feel foolish for looking at the painting when you could

just step outside and look at a real tree. But in

Uchizono’s work there is genuine admiration for this tree, and a

desire to express that admiration.

That is not enough, though. All landscape painters share a love of

nature.

But Uchizono has that intangible quality of individuality that

allows the viewer to identify the artist, the ability to allow us to

see through eyes other than our own, and you can see it developing on

her canvases.

Uchizono makes small plein air studies on-site, then takes them

back to her studio and then creates more carefully painted versions

of the scene, a standard practice. It’s often easier to articulate a

vision “recollected in tranquillity” than in the moment itself.

“Alone at Casper Park” (36x24, oil on canvas) is a result of what she

calls her “annual trek to capture the colors” of autumn. It depicts a

sycamore in peak form, with luminous oranges and yellows, lighted

from within. Interest is assisted once again by Uchizono’s skill at

depicting distance, the blue hills contrasting sharply with the

oranges of the tree.

“Alone at Casper Park” also exemplifies Uchizono’s interpretation

of form in landscape. The rough articulation of the leaves gives the

painting a sense of movement. Sycamores, with their wide, hand-shaped

leaves, seem prone to move in every breeze, and this one is dancing.

But it is also true that I know this is a sycamore because she

told me it was a sycamore. Uchizono’s hills, trees, grasses and

shrubs are abstracted, impressionistic, blurred.

A seascape, “Beautiful Morning,” shows how this can work

gracefully in her favor. The rocks of the Laguna coastline, so often

overly articulated in the typical landscapes you see hanging in the

local galleries, are here given their status as ground with broad

strokes of ochre paint. The ratty quality of the palms becomes a kind

of complementary roughness to their solid forms. The ocean water is

translucent and idyllic, sea green to deep blue, full of movement and

varying depth.

Having come so far in such a short time, I felt compelled to ask

if she felt like she learned something every time she painted. She

replied, “You always learn,” and quickly added, “I feel like I have

breakthroughs.” Style evolves, or the art dies. Uchizono will be

interesting to watch.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism. She currently teaches writing at the University of

California, Irvine.