honeyjones

MYRA WILSON AND FRIENDS 

PEACE LOVE AND FLOWERS 

SPRING 2023

 

I’ve been carrying the following message inside for a while. Since becoming familiar with the work of deceased artist Myra Wilson and having always believed in the power of return, I knew that she and her time resonate now, especially in spring within her exuberant, wildly energetic, innocent and playful imagery. This understanding and planning took on a deeper meaning upon the sobering reception of a Selective Service notice in my family’s mailbox this past winter, and I couldn’t help but be reminded that these two forces were inextricably bound.   

 

honeyjones began showing the work of deceased artist Myra Wilson more than two years ago. Starting in May of this year, along with six contemporary artists, Myra’s lingering presence has been extendedly featured and allows us an opportunity to emphasize the universal need for beauty, love and a hopeful spirit.  

 

Flower Power. 

 

Beginning her painting journey in the 1960s and settling into something of a groove in the 70s and early 80s, Myra produced an impressive array of artwork. Most likely influenced by the artists and contemporary pulse of society in the early mid-20th century, her work falls into recognizable genres with a progressively more robust singular voice of her own, as especially seen in her paintings of the early 1980s. 

 

Myra’s artwork is born of, representative and evocative of, an iconic era of social activism—The Summer of Love, significant anti-war sentiment and civil unrest, renewed attempts to secure women’s rights and to embrace egalitarian and earth-loving ideals, and a general questioning of authority amidst post-cold war tension and the push and fight for space age technology. Of the art movements and trends leading up to and within these times, including architecturally graphic and brutalist forms and a merging of organic and geometric forces, Myra, it seems, was trying them all. And her work and life force are shining brightly for us now.

 

For those of us who like to return and remember, it is the very good things we will take forward and carry. My favorite good things among Myra’s paintings are her portraits, in which the subjects are often either withdrawn or hidden, as if needing to be protected, or are otherwise very much giving the viewer their eyes and their full selves and emotions… 

 

A reminder that if we are looking…we are giving, and we are speaking without words. 

 

And we need our language, in many forms,  if we are going to be okay,  and if we need to fight for any good cause. And the good causes are laid before us in spades. It is not that our planet is dying. I’m sure our Mother Earth is much smarter than a collective we who have endangered our own habitats. Our time as humans on earth is limited. 

 

A flowering is temporary. Violence is regretful.  

 

If we are listening when someone is looking, and dialogue exists well before diplomacy…then we should be able to tell our children that there is hope because we have dialogue, and that we have words, hopefully an answer, a recourse, and hopefully a remedy, including when our sons are requested under penalty of imprisonment to submit their names to that list.  

 

Peace and love. Let’s do make.

 

Let the call up be not to take up false arms but to stand beside the one you love.

 

Let an image of beauty not launch a thousand ships but instead be worth a thousand words of love and understanding. 

 

Highlighted now and previously over the last month are several of Myra’s light and bright abstract florals, still lifes and portraits on canvas and works on paper in original Nielsen frames. Joining Myra are Bredt Handy, with a quartet of light and bright free-form color, a second quartet of textural and rich floral still lifes by Jenka Foreman, new and previously shown abstract works by Sirarpi Heghinian-Walzer, effortlessly delicate watercolors by new-to- honeyjones artist Fleur Thesmar and the delightful metaphoric medium of fabric collage in Mara Wagner’s Spring wall hanging. 

 

Thank you to the Artists and to All who have appreciated this gathering. 

 

Please visit the gallery this summer! 

 

I’m looking forward to making new friends …

 

Very Warmly and Respectfully, 

Julie