Sharron Antholt: INDIA

Sharron Antholt references architectural and sculptural shapes from India in her new work. The images come from her recent stay in Tamil Nadu, in South India in 2013, and they are also influenced from the years between 1963- 1985 when she lived for long periods in the Indian sub-continent; Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.

Sharron Antholt: INDIA
September 20- November 30, 2014
Opening September 20, Saturday 6:00- 8:00 pm
Green Chalk Contemporary
616 Lighthouse Ave
Monterey, CA

By reducing images of fortresses, temples and sculptural forms to flat shapes, Antholt attempts to find an essence or perhaps a basic representation for these forms. Like a map, which in its flattened state allows us to grasp something too large to comprehend: the entire country of India or the earth itself, for example. In these new works on paper and canvas, Antholt refers to what she calls “a feeling of condensed or collapsed time which powerfully permeates everyday life in India; the sensation of thousands of years existing in a single moment." 

Antholt extends these ideas of flattened time and space to the titles of her work, which are inspired by the 7th Century Bhakti poets of Tamil Nadu. The sensual descriptions used in that poetry describe sounds, smells and tastes in the 7th century that are still found everywhere in Tamil Nadu today, from the village roadside to the inner depths of the temples. For example, Sounds of Veena and Conch Shell, Scent of Sandalwood and Jasmine and Taste of Rosewater.

Although this series of works reflects Antholt's recent trip to India, as a California native she also finds inspiration for her work from sources as the California coast and the poetry of the Monterey Peninsula poet Robinson Jeffers. Jeffers suggests that we “uncenter our minds from ourselves” and “become confident as the rock and ocean that we were made from.” More than any other writer on the subject, Jeffers' poetry puts that appreciation of the natural world, his world at the edge of the Pacific, into words. Antholt puts these words into her paintings.