PETER ASPELL
In Ancient Landscape With Boli, the dominant overlayer of mauve simultaneously subdues and accentuates the bright blue hand at the left edge of the composition. The mauve overlayer has a similar effect on the red orange outline of the central crudely etched female shape and the pottery, brooms, and abstract markings that surround her. The picture is completed by several masklike floating faces and a pair of elongated pipes extending outward from the female’s head. Because Ancient Landscape With Boli unites its loud and quiet colors so harmoniously, it is perhaps the most visually appealing work in the show. In addition, the objects pique our interest; most fascinating are the pipes. Positioned as they are, they seem to present the female as a deity. The lines scratched into the areas near her become lines of upward motion; the figure seems to be rising above the trappings of her earthly life toward a celestial domain.
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This series has some formal problems. One has to do with switching from canvas to a paper base: the canvas can absorb all the thick, luscious layers of paint in a way that the less porous paper cannot. And though the paint layers integrate well on the cloth, they often end up looking too pushed around and roughly built up on the paper. Another problem is the regularity of the compositions: the images are spatially arranged in exactly the same way. Aspell depends too heavily on color changes to provide the necessary variation from picture to picture. Sometimes he tries to liven things up by adding a different type of creature–a bird or a sea wraith–to the array of fish, but the pictorial arrangement remains the same. One can only speculate as to why the fire ships lack the diversity apparent in the works devoted to women.
