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Johnson, Patricia Covo, "Earth Mass" from
the Warren Burnett Collection, 1989
Sally Chandler has a positive vision of the world in an age of anxiety, she has under lined hope. At a time when most art is a bed of nails, hers is Matisse’s easy chair. The series of paintings and objects comprising Earth Mass, is a paean to the beauty of the world. With a broad brush dipped in brilliant acrylics, the Texas artist has composed images of celebration. Inspired by travels and nurtured her lively personality, Sally Chandler's reverence for nature and romance with color artfully expressed in these works. Produced over a three and half year period, the series is the artist's ecological statement. "Its about my concern for the environment and the future of the planet," Chandler said. Earth Mass could have been merely an escape but is, instead, an eloquent statement of optimism The ebullient paintings are not landscapes in the traditional sense, although the sky and the oceans, the contours of the land and its bounty are recognized. Rather, the images allude to the poetic power of nature and focus on the elements as they interact and reinforce each other. There is exultation in the androgynous figures in The Three Graces and ripeness of flavour in Cacophony. Gardens and abundant crystal blend in pictures of Eden on Earth, as in Findhorn and Caracol. The harsher aspects are not ignored as evident in Tornado Watch, where the rage of winds is what Chandler portrays, but in the end like the adage says, there cannot be a rainbow without the rain. The meeting of Sally Chandler and Warren Burnett was fortuitous, for Earth Mass is one of those rare collections of work in which the artist has completed a thematic cycle and the collector has made a commitment to its wholeness. Born a generation apart she in 1951, he nearly three decades earlier (1927), both grew up in what Burnett describes as the "desiccation and alkali flats of West Texas”. When the lush exuberance fired by Chandler's imagination sparked a responsive chord n Burnett’s, the joyous result was a harmony of purpose. PATRICIA COVO JOHNSON / Art Critic Houston Chronicle |
