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Between Heaven and Earth: Inspirations

September 6 - October 19, 2013

 

Between Heaven and Earth, a two-part exhibition of work by Jonathan Soard, reflects the artist's soul-searching experience with the prairie landscape of his childhood in Dana, Indiana. There, the endless horizon line of the west central Indiana plains is punctuated by the towering power plant of Vermillion County. The works presented in Inspirations are studies for the larger works on view in Installation being held October 4, 2013 through January 4, 2014. (right: Jonathan Soard, Prairie Power Plant Study #14, 12 x 24 inches, oil on canvas, © Jonathan Soard, on loan from Dixie Coates Beckham)

Between Heaven and Earth: Inspirations represents the development of a new genre for Soard, a Brooklyn-based artist who had previously concentrated on the human and animal figure. The artist began the series a few years ago when return trips home to care for his aging parents prompted him to contemplate his relationship to the prairie. The first work of the series was Prairie Power Plant, Seminal View, which he made as a gift for a childhood friend who was retiring from the plant. The flood of memories and emotions that came from this small act of commemoration led to a sustained relationship with the landscape of Soard's childhood. The artist explains:

I've never really thought of myself as a landscape painter. But here I am, in a deep affair with that endless horizon line in the Midwest. I grew up on these plains. My parents grew up and grew old here. Once again, my parents have gotten me to grow in ways I never thought possible as I return to care for them. The ways I've grown from these visits appear in my paintings.

As the landscape studies progressed, Soard challenged himself to develop a unique vision of the area. His work has been influenced by the weight of parents facing their mortality and memories of "some of the darker sides of a childhood/adolescence spent in the shadow of the power plant cloud." The landscapes accordingly often have a dark and foreboding quality, with symbolism derived from his youth on the farm and his religious upbringing:

On the prairie, my world was cleanly divided Between Heaven and Earth. As far as my eye could see, there was a horizon line into infinity -- no matter where I looked. I usually felt trapped on the wrong side of that line....The polar nature of irreconcilable opposites seemed to spill over into everything I knew.

In Between Heaven and Earth, the power plant stacks and their steam represent a bridge that now unites Soard's childhood world of opposites into a new one of complementary forces.

 

(above: Jonathan Soard, Power Plant Stack Study, 11 x 7.5 inches, (fr 20 x 16 inches), gouache on black paper, 2012 © Jonathan Soard)

 

Object labels for the exhibition Between Heaven and Earth: Inspirations

 
Prairie Power Plant Study #14, 2012
Oil on canvas
Collection of Dixie Coates Beckham
 
In this work, the steam plume bends to the right, almost as if it is communicating with the nearby buildings. Soard's choice of lurid colors creates an ominous effect. The artist describes the painting as an "infernal landscape" that looks at "the steam from those stacks, coal from underground in Vermillion County, and the insatiable need for energy in the heartland. The process seems to sublimate coal into steam and is piped into the sky."
 
Thomas Hart Benton was an important early influence on Soard's work. Soard saw the Swope Art Museum's Benton, Threshing Wheat, on visits while growing up in nearby Dana, Indiana. The artist comments, "The clouds and landscape undulate like a T.H. Benton but the writhing landscape devoid of people is as threatening as the stormy sky."
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant, Seminal View, 2013
Oil on canvas
Collection of Connie and Larry Williams
 
A view of the power plant from the back yard of Soard's family home, this painting was the impetus for Between Heaven and Earth. Soard began to consider the power plant as subject matter when his lifelong friend, Larry Williams, retired from the Duke Energy Power Plant in Vermillion County after 30 years of service. During the two years that he worked on the painting, Soard reflected on the path that his friend had taken and that he had not. Soard explains, "I was challenged by the view, the setting, the time that had passed, and all of the changes that had come through the years... only to bring me back to my parents' house to care for them as they aged."
 
 
 
Power Plant #2, 2013
Oil on canvas
Collection of Connie and Larry Williams
 
As in many works by American Regionalists Thomas Hart Benton and John Rogers Cox, the dynamic sky dominates this landscape painting. Soard states:
 
Once I started thinking about the landscape around Dana, Indiana, I began drawing it over and over. Every time I would draw it I would think of its significance in my life. The drawings turned into paintings after a few months, and it's important to remember at this point that I was not known as a landscape artist. I found myself searching for a vocabulary of forms, colors and symbols that might capture what words couldn't. This painting is an early example of how the steam became a metaphor for connection between the earth and sky as the steam rises and morphs into a baroque set of cumulus clouds. This eventually became the link between heaven and earth in my mind.
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant #9
2013
Oil on canvas 
Courtesy of the Artist
 
The artist's fascination with the frequently overlooked beauty of the prairie landscape is evident in paintings such as Prairie Power Plant #9:
 
OK, I admit, part of my investigation of landscape painting was to romanticize the pure splendor of the area. It is really all around, but rarely seen for what it is. I am not known for pretty pictures, but this is one I could live with, an homage to the deity of electrical power in peaceful harmony with its surrounding. This is actually the case; the power plant is known for scrubbing most particulates from the coal it burns so that the exhaust rises as a virtually pristine pillar of steam for us to follow by day.
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant, Moon View, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
There is a long and rich tradition of nocturnal depictions of landscapes by artists as varied as El Greco, Claude Lorrain, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Ralph Blakelock. In Power Plant, Moon View, Soard both acknowledges that tradition and presents the uniqueness of the prairie landscape at night:
The prairie on a moonlit night is a memorable experience. Backlit clouds can become an El Greco explosion in the sky, and the cloud of vapor rising from the power plant absolutely dances in the moonlight. Unlike El Greco, however, the drama of Spanish hillsides is taken over by the stark (dramatic) comparison of atmospheric action to profound silence on the ground. In the search for my landscapes, I knew that I couldn't pursue this path, but I do think it's one of the studies that is close to my heart.
 
 
 
Prairie with Power Plant, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Soard frequently painted the view of the power plant as seen from his parents' back yard, as in this work, which he describes as pivotal to the series:
 
I realized I just could not use local (realistic) color and capture all the feelings I had. Color is seductive. Even with an ominous sky that goes from sunlit to dark, it doesn't capture the intensity of my feelings.
 
 
 
Dusk Brush & Stack View, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
The cool tones of blue and gray that Soard has chosen for Dusk Brush & Stack View evoke the still quality of twilight, a time that the artist describes as "the spectrum of color being sapped out of the world by darkness." Dominating the composition are hedgerows, which Soard considers an endangered species due to the expansion of industrial agriculture:
 
Every arable acre of ground is tilled. It's business, and I leave possible judgments about that to people who know far more than me about the pros and cons of big business on the farm.
 
The artist believes that the land depicted in this work is part of the Ten O'clock Line Treaty that resulted in settlers receiving three million acres of land in Indiana and Illinois from Native Americans.
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant with Bins, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
The influence of Thomas Hart Benton's painting, Threshing Wheat, is perhaps most apparent in Prairie Power Plant with Bins. About Benton's painting, Soard notes:
 
The smoke from the threshing machine in his painting is an example of business come to the heartland of his time. Men are shown working under the cloud of black smoke that mimics the cloud formations about it, and those clouds, in turn, mimic the undulation of the land underneath. As I've been studying his painting for this exhibit, I've started to ask myself if the machine is really in service to the people in the painting, or are the people in service to the machine?
 
In this painting of mine, I was thinking of Benton's clouds, and the contrast between his smoke and my steam. His men are in service to the machines that would feed the world. In my world, there are no people on the landscapes. They are either in air-conditioned tractor cabs or cooled houses. The unseen laborers of our time are cloistered IN the machine that feeds our need for energy.
 
 
 
Power Plant Stacks, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Power Plant Stacks is a transitional work that bridges the artist's early studies and the subsequent paintings. The smoke plume's red tones mirror the color of the earth. The smoke trail is the scene's only sign of movement.
 
 
 
Prairie Study, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Soard created most works in the Between Heaven and Earth series from his parents' back yard, but occasionally he depicted the power plant from a different location, as in this study in which the ubiquitious power lines and phone lines that punctuate the landscape are evident. Depicting the landscape from new locations led him to more general reflections about energy:
 
The significance of energy to rural culture is no different than the significance to urban culture. We all consume vast amounts and its availability rules our lives. The power plant at the centerpiece of this exhibit is just one of the networks that feeds the electrical "grid" that we've come to take for granted.
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant #6, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
In this painting, Soard sought to convey "the intensity, the drama, the sense of foreboding on a muscular landscape that has been flayed, showing the muscle underneath.It's not the only way I feel about the Midwest, but it is one way that I see it. I know it's possible that others will too."
 
 
 
Prairie Study (Heaven and Earth), 2012
Gouache on black paper
Courtesy of the Artist
 
In the drawings he made for Between Heaven and Earth: Inspirations, Soard pondered the answer to the question of how to draw a landscape that was distinctively his. Prairie Study (Heaven and Earth), one of the artist's personal favorites, focuses in particular on the essential qualities of the sky. Soard comments:
 
It's as fluid and ephemeral as a Helen Frankenthaler or a Morris Louis. It's as minimal as a Robert Motherwell.This was probably the piece that determined heaven and earth as complementary forces: the endless horizon line, the subtleties of a night sky and the bubble of energy on the ground that represents the power plant and its steam.
 
 
 
Stack Study, 2012
Gouache on black paper
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Soard wished to discover the degree to which he could "abstract the exhaust stacks before they disintegrated into pure abstraction." He has created many such drawings, and, should he continue with the series, a group of large-scale paintings is a possibility.
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant Study, 2012
Gouache on black paper
Courtesy of the Artist
 
A nearly abstract rendering of the landscape, this study and others like it have been important as the artist developed Between Heaven and Earth. About his creative process for the studies, Soard states:
 
As I drew, I would think to myself, OK, if I paint landscape, what will my landscapes look like. What will make them MY landscapes? I made simple studies, like this one. Does the stack rise out of the prairie like a tree with roots as deep as the height above the ground? Does the steam relate more to the ground than to the sky above it?
 
 
 
Power Plant Stack Study, 2012
Gouache on black paper
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Offering a closer view of the stacks, Soard created this work during a visit to the site. He explains that he wished to change his point of view "from that far-away specter of steam rising off the prairie. At close range the size of the power plant hits home and the immensity of the stacks loom overhead. That's a sense of foreboding that made sense to me as an industrial presence in the heart of an agrarian culture -- business in the heartland, if you will."
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant Study, 2012
Gouache on black paper
Courtesy of the Artist
 
The artist considers Prairie Power Plant Study important for his handling of earth and sky in a new way; from this point on, he stopped pairing red for the earth with a vivid blue for the sky. He notes, "As much as I like it, I couldn't get past the feeling that I should stand and salute the flag colors."
 
 
 
Prairie Power Plant Study, 2012
Gouache on black paper
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Soard observes about this work, "Drawings that didn't use local color (i.e., present in the actual scene) let me focus on the feeling more than the beauty. With this and other drawings that came with it, I was beginning to find my own vocabulary in painting terms."
 
 
 
Untitled (panorama), 2011
Photograph on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
As part of the creative process Soard took many photographs to help him better understand the prairie landscape and visualize this series.
 
The view from Soard's parents' back yard, seen in this photograph, served as the inspiration for many of the studies and paintings in Between Heaven and Earth.
 

 

Between Heaven and Earth: Installation

October 4, 2013 - January 4, 2014

 

The series of paintings presented in Between Heaven and Earth: Installation examines the relationship between the expansive plains of west central Indiana and the Vermillion County power plant that dominates the landscape of the region. Artist Jonathan Soard depicts the prairie as writhing with energy, almost as if the crust of earth has been stripped off to expose the churning activity of growth and decay beneath. The activity in the prairie is mirrored by a sky that smolders with mingled currents of steam and storm clouds. (right: Jonathan Soard, Between Heaven and Earth (Flayed Landscape), 56 X 96 inches, oil on canvas, 2013, © Jonathan Soard)

During visits home to care for his parents in Dana, Indiana, Soard began reconsidering his childhood understanding of the landscape as one that clearly divided the world in opposite halves. To the young Soard, the exhaust stacks of the power plant, visible from his back yard, had represented a bridge between the realms of heaven and earth. About his interest in the landscape today, he explains:

Because I return to the prairie a lot these days, I revisit this power plant and use it as a fulcrum, to pry the lid off of a perpetual struggle, reconciling opposites. I am curious about my relationship to my parents and the place I came from. As I get a chance to reinvent the symbols of my early years, I see complements instead of opposites.

Somber in mood, the series reflects the artist's feelings about returning to the area to say a slow goodbye to his aging parents. Soard dissects his memories and emotions, and he reflects on spirituality, mortality and transcendence as they are tied to the prairie in this body of work. He often presents the prairie at dusk or at night, when colors are dark or muted.

The South Vermillion power plant is seen in the distance in most of the paintings in Between Heaven and Earth: Installation. Soard's series reveals the cyclical nature of modern energy consumption. Fuel, in the form of coal, is mined from the ground, burnt in the plant to create energy, and finally released back into the atmosphere as vaporous exhaust. Thus, the works move beyond the specificity of the locale to symbolize the greater cycle of life.

Soard notes that the Swope Art Museum has a special significance to him as the first museum in his life, commenting, "I was literally overwhelmed. It was my first exposure to 'the real thing' not printed pictures in a book... I was definitely hooked." After attending classes at Indiana State University in 1972, he received degrees from Indiana University and Columbia University. Jonathan Soard lives Brooklyn, NY.

 

(above: Jonathan Soard, Night Prairie Power Plant, 48 x 48 inches, oil on canvas, 2013, © Jonathan Soard)

 

Object labels for the exhibition Between Heaven and Earth: Installation

Prairie Power Plant, 2012
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Soard's brushwork is toned down to a whisper in this nearly monotone landscape that he calls "a bare bones examination of the power plant and its environment." Sandwiched between dense bands of earth and hovering cloud, the power plant is seen in ghostly silhouette against the glow of an ocher sky.
 
 
   
Flayed Catalpa, 2012
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
The model for this painting is a "gnarled and contorted" catalpa tree from the Soard family back yard in Dana, Indiana. The painting displays Soard's trademark brushwork and is related to his recent drawings of the human figure:
 
The object is rendered as a muscular figure, flayed and under examination. This particular tree...was a full grown tree that my father remembers as a child long before he owned the house that goes with it. For me it is a symbol for tenacity and a metaphor for the rigors of making sense of our pasts.
 
 
 
Night Prairie Power Plant, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
In Night Prairie Power Plant Soard activates the ground with gestural brushwork. The plant is connected to this activity as if with living roots. Though dark, the scene glows with a vibrant blue light from an unseen moon. On the horizon a miniscule farmstead flickers with electric light as if in conversation with the moonlit exhaust plume from the plant that supplies it with electricity.
 
 
 
Lush Prairie Power Plant, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Unlike most of the works in the series, Lush Prairie Power Plant is comparatively bright and positive in tone with light emanating from the sun rather than the moon. In his adolescence, the power plant took form in sight of Soard's back yard. "It was (and is) an appropriate metaphor for my own energy, that was stoked by an insatiable curiosity and a need for more of the world."
 
 
 
Opposing Fronts, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Along the length of the endless horizon, in Opposing Fronts, the sky swirls in the glow of a threatening storm and the raw, red earth seems to rage in anticipation. Soard states:
 
I identify with the feelings of intense loneliness that are to be found on the prairie. The land is flat. The storms are fierce. The crops are subject to the whims of weather that inspire a sense of eternal pessimism for most people.
 
 
 
Flayed Landscape #3, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
In answer to a question about his use of color Soard replied:
 
I think they're beautiful, but they certainly aren't pretty. There's a foreboding quality in the air and a visceral quality in the ground. It's how I feel about coming back to slowly say goodbye to my parents. It's about all the years I spent there, trapped with the [religious enthusiasts] and their double edged sword of support and judgment. It's all a part of my character. It's all part of who I am. Coming back let's me visit this, like a trip to the graveyard to pay respects. I also couldn't bear the idea of pretty landscapes. That would feel like minimizing the feelings behind why I'm doing landscapes in the first place
 
 
 
Between Heaven and Earth (Flayed Landscape), 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Soard implies a corporeal connection to the earth by using a symbolic red for the ground and an expressive brushwork that evokes muscle and bone on the butcher block or dissecting table. He emphasizes this connection by titling many of the paintings with the word "flayed." Soard comments:
 
There isn't really a way for me to verbally express the gut wrenching feelings that a formative time spent on the prairie, learning about the world through the early years of television, could evoke. Religion, sexual revolution, rural flight, transportation innovations, communications . . . it was a time of a certain kind of cultural evolution. At the time it was referred to as a "revolution." All of that feeling is still churning around in a landscape that is practically "entrails" or flayed muscles. It's as though the flesh of the Earth is writhing in, what is it, pain, procreation, gestation, I don't know. Like I said, I can't express it in words.
 
 
 
Flayed Landscape #5, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist
 
Flayed Landscape #5 is one of the few paintings in the mature Heaven and Earth series that maintains the combination of vibrant blue sky and red ground with which Soard briefly experimented in preliminary studies. The painting expresses the artist's conflicted feelings as it contrasts these colors against the dark overtones of the shadowy earth and steam. The prominent cloud reflects the red of the "flayed" fleshy earth below and casts a shadow upon the earth that is echoed by the dark receding steam.


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