Harvest Time 2014

Curator: Looking at Bernadette Resha's "Harvest Time" from 2014, painted using acrylic and collage, my immediate feeling is... joyfully disorganized? There's a bright, almost frantic energy to it. Editor: Yes, I can see that. Resha's style embraces this wonderful sort of organised chaos. She plays with perspective by inserting two painted, potted plant inserts on a stark background consisting of both block colours and thin line detail in tonal shades of browns, oranges and yellows. Then, for added charm, she slaps one larger individual flower motif, to almost hang from the background, in the lower right. What does it make you think of? Curator: It feels a little like a scrapbook page exploded. The flat planes of color alternating with collaged images create a layered effect that’s playful, even childlike. I appreciate how the background stripes push forward, almost competing with the potted flower images for our attention. Editor: Precisely. She's blurring those lines between foreground and background in a deliberate way. I read it as a challenge to the traditional notions of depth in painting. Where should our eye rest, and why? There's an argument to be made that art shouldn’t strive to mimic reality, but rather comment on it. What function does art hold in society? How is value given? These questions have haunted and intrigued our society throughout history. Resha doesn’t pretend to give the answers, but instead encourages conversation by simply throwing all of these wonderful stylistic attributes together in one single art piece. Curator: I’m intrigued by how this approach speaks to modernism in the current age. We're inundated with visual information. Does Resha intend to reflect our culture in which we now live through collage and a chaotic background that somehow also gives the eye places to fixate? Editor: Possibly. Ultimately I'd say that she's giving us a snapshot of nature refracted through a distinctly contemporary lens, acknowledging artifice but celebrating beauty, or vice-versa. We see beauty where it's accessible, while never actually taking itself too seriously! Curator: That playful unseriousness is definitely the charm. It invites us to look closer, find joy in the unexpected, and perhaps even rethink what constitutes a compelling artistic image. Editor: Well said! For me, “Harvest Time” prompts reflection on the purpose of visual rhetoric in current art, and our visual expectations. What can you truly do with one single canvas? And that thought alone, will linger with me long after I walk away from this piece.