Pamela Chapman
Dictionary X (Love Suite)
Lobby Installation

February 1 - March 5

Pamela Chapman combines her interest in language with that of the landscape to create a series of atmospheric paintings that, from a distance, appear to be abstract color studies, but, upon closer scrutiny, reveal themselves to be conceptual studies of words and their definitions. Chapman teaches landscape painting and many of her own works evolve out of that subject; however, her approach to landscape derives in part from critical theory and suggests the idea, postulated by the French postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida, that meaning is provisional and endlessly changing, ultimately obtained from an interaction between the reader and text. In some of her earlier works, such as her River series, the subject of landscape is clear and overt. In her Alphabet series, there are images of agitated waves juxtaposed with floating figures, such as a suspended nude baby. In the later Dictionary I, Chapman installs paintings of desolate trees next to portraits, alongside a floral still life, and, adjacent to a repeated wave image. This dislocation of image and meaning (sign and signifier) suggests the conditional state of the interpretation of images in which they are dependent upon what is next to them and on what the viewer (reader) brings to the image (text).

In her more recent large installation of paintings, Dictionary X (Love Suite), on view at the DCCA, Chapman combines words and images, finding that painting and writing are not mutually exclusive activities. The color tonalities of the individual works suggest the atmospheric spaces of land/seascape paintings: sky, fog, earth, water. In this way, they emerge out of a romantic landscape tradition that suggests the sublime. In fact, Chapman walks regularly along a nearby river’s edge and draws inspiration from this activity. Yet, through a closer examination, words reveal themselves, floating within the colored atmosphere of each work. The paintings divulge their words only after the viewer has slowed down and looked more closely. Chapman is also interested in the dictionary, which she explains is a commonly used text, often taken for granted, but which invests words with meaning. She says of the dictionary, “Its structure, based on alphabetical order, is rigid, while the free associations that can be made between the definitions of one word and the next make for a feeling of randomness within the order.” She finds that the process of painting the dictionary word for word, as she does, is time-consuming and allows the artist and the viewer, who reads the painted words, to weave personal connections and associations. Clearly, Chapman understands Derrida’s claim that meaning is constantly shifting and that associative relationships play a vital role in the interpretation of text (images). However, she also understands the sublimity of nature and the wonder of the everyday. Chapman states, “. . . the act of painting becomes an act of homage and with such attention the commonplace is revealed as extraordinary.”