Review

"MY choice is what I choose to do!" (oil on canvas)

Trish Breed

Noon-4 p.m.

The MOJO Collection
2009 Baltimore, Studio B
Kansas City, MO
816.283.3444

Hours: Noon-4 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
Runs through: Aug. 28.

Gallery site http://www.themojocollection.com

I really haven't turned into Dan Brown, but artwork really can be loaded with esoteric meaning.

Not in the "hidden messages/global conspiracy/Scary Cabal of the Week" sense, but in the sense that each artist infuses his or her work with private significance. The only one with the key is the one who made the work ... and it's up to the creator to dispense or withhold that information.

Trish Breed's key? "For me," she says, "it all comes down to time, space and identity."

Breed's abstract oil paintings, on display at the MOJO Collection in the Crossroads through Saturday, are more than assemblages of color, shape and texture. They're inner self-portraits, reflecting her life and circumstances at the time of creation.

"It's a Kodak moment, I can tell you," she says. "It could be an excerpt from a diary, or maybe several excerpts from a diary mashed into one."

That diary, however, is still in painted code. Titles provide some clues, as do colors and how they're arranged. Still, even knowing that the piece above is called MY choice is what I choose to do!, and seeing the painting's brilliant colors (especially the background blue) and bold composition, there's still a good deal that the viewer can't know about it or any of the other works at MOJO collection.

Breed acknowledges that; "My identity is as truthful as I can be," she says, "in that particular moment of time and space."

It's not necessary to know Breed's secrets to appreciate her paintings, which will also be on display starting Sept. 3, in a group show at StagePort in the Crossroads. They're strong visually, with multiple visual hooks and enough going on in each one that it can't all be taken in with a quick scan.

Knowing her emphasis on time, space and identity, though, does provide the opportunity for each viewer to think about those things as well. After all, perception of any given work of art is bound to be shaded by a viewer's unique variables: tastes, life experiences, even energy level and current mood.

In essence, every artistic experience we take in is another brushstroke in our own private self-portraits ... or, if you will, another acquisition for our inner museums. Breed's works, and the ideas which drive them, are well worth hanging on the walls of the mind.

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