Review

"The Faithless Lover (A spell to remove the pain inflicted by a cruel lover)", Collage Painting.

Sheryl Pierson
Portrait Invitational Exhibition
(group show)

10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

Blue Gallery
118 Southwest Boulevard
Kansas City, MO
816.527.0823

Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
Runs through: Sept. 29.

Gallery site: http://www.bluegalleryonline.com

Most of the works in The Blue Gallery's Portrait Invitational Exhibition bend the parameters of the form, forcing viewers to expand their inner definitions as well.

Sheryl Pierson's collage paintings are no exception.

The women's faces she depicts are little more than masks, none of them bearing any expression stronger than a gentle smile. And they are just that -- faces, superimposed in surrealistic combinations with birds' bodies and Voodoo spell text (as in today's featured piece, The Faithless Lover (A spell to remove the pain inflicted by a cruel lover).

Pierson's use of bird imagery makes sense within the Voodoo tradition, where chickens and other fowl are often sacrificed. Her artist's statement explains things further:

A common theme in my artwork is relationships, the interaction between lovers, family, friends, women to women, men to men, the age old battles between the sexes and etc... sometimes the struggle for power.

Those elements all tie together in the paintings that make up Pierson's portion of the show.

It's a sad fact that people -- not only women, but men as well -- often feel they have to mask their less placid selves for the sake of a relationship. (See also Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which is less a comedy than a fairly chilling story of brainwashing and behavior modification through isolation and depravation ... but that's a declamation for another act on another stage.)

The true personality, then, becomes a sacrifice on the altar of tranquility ... but both sides suffer for it. One has to hide emotions and true nature, while the other is deprived of true knowing. Each lives a lie -- one actively and one passively -- until something happens to make the mask slip, if ever it does.

They don't always, you know. The woman in The Faithless Lover (A spell to remove the pain inflicted by a cruel lover) is maintaining her pleasant façade despite being wronged, after all.

Pierson's portraits, at heart, are less about individuals than humanity as a whole. For all of their surreal visual imagery, they're hyper-realistic from an emotional standpoint. That's not always a comforting thought ... but who said art was supposed to be comfortable?

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