Summer Radiance 2008

Curator: Standing before us is Bernadette Resha's "Summer Radiance," created in 2008, a striking mixed-media piece. Editor: My initial reaction is its vibrant color palette – that deep cobalt blue really makes the sunflower's yellow pop! It's incredibly cheerful, almost aggressively so. Curator: Aggressively cheerful! I appreciate that characterization. Knowing it's mixed media – oil and acrylic paints, plus, I suspect, impasto techniques – emphasizes the artist’s engagement with materials. The thickness of the paint, how it reflects light...it all points to a very tactile process of creation. You can see each mark. Editor: Sunflowers, though, are such loaded symbols. Van Gogh, of course, but also generally they represent adoration, longevity, and even, at times, blind faith, following the sun as they do. Placed against this unnaturally vibrant blue...does it comment on manufactured joy, perhaps? Curator: That is interesting to interpret. Resha might be commenting on our contemporary world, how things are made artificial in society as sunflowers became very popular, planted by agricultural industries. Editor: And yet, there's a certain organic feel here, despite the boldness. Look at the slight asymmetry of the petals, the almost clumsy application of the impasto in the center. It is in-between. Curator: Absolutely, a dialogue is struck between the handmade and something far more manufactured. How the artist manipulated such cheap resources with an industry history and with her experience, is how this art shines. Editor: It certainly offers food for thought, contemplating how a familiar symbol like a sunflower is charged with new meaning by Resha’s unique and very palpable method. Curator: Precisely, a piece that rewards careful observation of both its surface and its symbolic underpinnings.