“I really was thinking about language, the power of it.” This is what the artist of the above painting, Karen Green, said when asked about her new collection of works entitled “Sure Is Quiet.” This collection is currently at the Space Arts Center and Gallery and intrigued me so much because of her usage of written language to create her pieces. I am a writer \ and frequently find myself looking for something in the Times that combines the written word and any of the art forms we’ve been examining. With this artist’s work, I found just that!
Sadly, Green began creating this collection after her husband, David Foster Wallace, hung himself at their home in Claremont, California. Green admitted that painting was her only way of dealing with this grave situation. Her emotions (like those of so many other great artists) have clearly been poured out onto her canvases in the form of words, which I find interesting because her husband was a writer. She combines her love of painting and her husband’s love of writing to help her grieve her husband’s death.
What I enjoy most about this painting is that you can study it all day. There are so many phrases to decipher and ponder, like “invisible” and “ghost” and countless words that are hard to decode because of overlapping or smudging. What do you think of it?
You can also check out the NY Times article about Green and her works here.
It is interesting the David Foster Wallace’s widow has created a work that uses words. Wallace’s works are wordy in the extreme. He was an absolute virtuoso wordsmith.