I began my day on June 14 by drinking a strong cup of coffee and watching a 1973 live performance of Steely Dan’s “My Old School.” That performance, featuring bright orange stage lights, sequin bandeaus and psychedelic ponchos, made me ask the question: Where did all the color go in the last 53-or-so years?
Fortunately, that same day, my question was answered at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The answer came in the form of a single, solitary, drop of India Ink in the bottom left corner of artist Jan Lhormer’s piece “Blessed.”
That drop, bright orange and looking as wet as the day it dripped, woke me up from an early-summer daze. Now, does that single drop of color negate the steady beige-ification of the world since 1973? No. But it cheered me up!
“Blessed” is part of Lhormer’s “Earth & Sky — Invisible Worlds” solo exhibition on view through August 16. The piece, a vibrant and gestural illustration of flowers and botanicals that toes the line between abstraction and figurative representation, is part of Lhormer’s “In the Garden” series, which, according to the artist, “gives voice to the intangible world of emotion, the unseen, and the poetic.”
This series captured my attention — especially three pieces arranged vertically on the same wall, the aforementioned “Blessed,” and the similar “Dragon” and “Back to Beauty,” all made using India Ink on heavy paper.
I was drawn to the vibrancy and immediacy of the works — something encapsulated in that drop of ink.