Flock of Days | Groton Public Library

Groton Public Library

A Flock of Days:
P.C. Lawson and Heather K. Lenz

18 November 2013 - 18 January 2014

P.C. Lawson, Territories 3,
monotype (click to enlarge)

Heather K. Lenz, Superimposition 2,
oil on board (click to enlarge)

Harvard based printmaker Pam Lawson and her long time friend and associate Heather K. Lenz have compiled an exhibit of prints and paintings infused with the vibrant colors of New England. The flash of red from a blackbird’s wing in one of Pam Lawson’s monoprints echoes the rich reflections of fall color in Heather Lenz’s multi-layered panels. A Flock of Days, aptly titled from the passage of a poem by the late Carlisle based poet Judith Goodenough, suits both artists in sublime fashion:

At the pasture pond
A flock of days
Rises and is gone

P.C. Lawson, Listening 3, monotype

Pam Lawson’s red-winged blackbirds are real in a way that only a partial abstraction of a living thing can achieve. It is as if they are arrested in a moment, suspended in air, heart fluttering, chest expanding, wing tips slightly raised. Pam’s technique for painting with rollers allows her to experiment with color and composition in a spontaneous fashion. Working with an expertise born of years of practice, she quickly captures the essence of bird, sky, and grass with roller, brush and viscous ink.

Heather K. Lenz, Superimposition 1, oil on board

In creating layers of oil paint on panels, Heather Lenz provides a method for diving into her work. Floating on the surface is an opaque layer of rolled on oil paint representing the surface of the water on which float lily pads and pond scum, a semi-permeable membrane through which can be seen the glittering colors of a riotous New England fall. The colors themselves are merely a reflection of what is happening above the surface, obscuring the darker, colder space beneath the water. Delving in the viewer is invited to explore not just the painting, but the meaning of reality itself- the question of what is real, and how much of what we see is merely an illusion, a floating world.