Review

A review of John Fennell's Night Lights series, in Natural Capital

John Fennell, “Entrance,” oil on canvas, 22” x 28”. Image: courtesy of the artist.

Gateway Gallery
Clayton, Missouri
February 6 — April 2, 2011

I used to drive to a friend’s house every week at the same time in the evening, when it was already dark. I knew my way by the few visible markers along the way, namely stop signs and street signs — things that are usually visible to us no matter the time of day. Then, when the days started to seem longer because Daylight Savings Time had made the hour "spring" forward, the street signs were no longer the only things visible. A neighborhood pool appeared seemingly out of nowhere, houses I’d never noticed before lined the streets, and suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I knew the way to my friend's. Nothing had really changed except that what once was hidden in darkness was made evident in the daylight.

This memory came back to me when I first viewed John Fennell’s series of paintings, Night Lights, which is part of the Natural Capital exhibition at Gateway Gallery. In his paintings, Fennell studies the way that artificial sources of light illuminate the night. The scenes are glimpses of nighttime in Milwaukee, where he painted the series in 2004, but could be any town in America. Driving and walking around the Wisconsin city’s suburban areas, Fennell observed the ways artificial light illuminated the landscape.

“Night is often a metaphor for the hidden, the barely known,” he says. “In these paintings of often overlooked places, night suggests the anxieties, the longings and mysteries that lie within all of us."

John Fennell, “From the Window,” oil on canvas, 16” x 20”. Image: courtesy of the artist.

Most of his paintings are devoid of people, perhaps to highlight even more that these night landscapes exist whether or not anyone is there to witness them. It also sharpens the metaphor that these landscapes are the anxieties and uncertainties within us. In From the Window, we see a voyeuristic view of a floodlight illuminating a picnic table and garage. The garage lights up even more because of its golden yellow color, mimicking a nighttime sun. It reminds me of the so-called light bulb Fennell says goes off in his head when he walks around and sees something that strikes a connection with an emotion. If the feeling lives with him long enough, it translates onto the canvas.

He usually does a series of pencil sketches on site, taking note of colors that make up the scene. What he paints then becomes a “remembered reality,” as Fennell says. Observing how memory filters through a person’s imagination is another point of intrigue in Fennell’s works.

John Fennell, “Curve Ahead,” oil on board, 12” x 16”. Image: courtesy of the artist.

There is a heightened contrast of light and dark in his works, somehow showing that the darkness of night also has a way of illuminating its surroundings. For instance, in Curve Ahead, the night sky has its own luminosity and glow against the dark forest below, as even in our moments of uncertainty and wandering, there are small instances of enlightenment and signs of direction.

The way Fennell shows a stark contrast between light and dark and isolates little moments of modern American life remind me of scenes from Edward Hopper’s 20th-century American realist paintings. Just as Hopper used light and shadow to evoke a certain mood, Fennell shows us our own wandering journeys in search of small moments of clarity. He continues a tradition of using everyday American places — a neighborhood, a road, a highway underpass — to show us that the simplest and most mundane moments piece themselves together to create some sense of meaning.

-re-

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