Sidonie Caron: Memorabilia
Attic Gallery,
Portland
Oct 4, 2001 - Oct 27,
2001
 Anatomy (2001), collage, wax, paint on wood panel |
Sidonie Caron rescues paintings. At
the age of one, her German-Jewish family was rescued before
the Nazi invasion and sent to Holland, then rescued once
again and sent to England. Caron recognizes that she has
kept an artistic record of her life. She divides her work
into that which responds to the world outside herself
(figurative and landscape paintings), and work that is a
response to her internal creativity (abstract painting).
The painting titles The Anatomy (an homage to her surgeon
husband), developed from an anatomical image by T.B.
Albenus, etched around the 1800's. This image has hung
around Caron's studio for over twenty years and is part of
the cause and also the effect of the painting. Using this
image as the central theme, she collaged X-rays from
magnetic resonance imagery, postage stamps an illustrations
from Grey's Anatomy onto old wood drawing clipboard panels
and then visually held everything together with a coating of
wax, followed by a shellac-based layer that gave the surface
a wet, reflective finish.
In "Rescuing" The Anatomy, Caron felt that to compensate her
need for structure and order, some visual composition was
needed, so her well-known patterns of prayer rugs were
applied to this work. She took the techniques of collage and
her prayer rug paintings and combined them together, going
beyond collage and adding a deeper signature to the
imagery.
© Allyn Cantor