by Tamara Wong
The majority of Cale’s work is comprised of shellacked wood panels in the 5 to 6 foot square range, upon which the artist has collaged paint strokes. Considering the relatively small size of the gallery space to the panels, and the lack of sufficient spacing between panels, the viewer is left claustrophobic, reminded of low ceilinged wood panelled basements of 1970. Perhaps the artist has recreated a past experience of fighting back against childhood claustrophobia, crayon clutched in pudgy child hand, ready to deface the impeding walls? This, however, is not the case. After listening to the artist, reading the gallery website's synopsis of her work, and referencing Cale's artist statement found on her website, my lens of interpretation has shifted.
Now I stand in the middle of this space, boxed in and battered by these whirlwinds of deconstructed appliquéd brushstrokes, and I am in awe. As any creative person who has worked through artistic frustration knows, this compressing, drowning, intimidating feeling placed on the artist by her work, her materials, her inspiration, all that she has said and can never say is the epitome of familiarity in the drive that lets her continue her work.
American author, Ruth Stone best describes this force. Stone’s thoughts were retold in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted Talk "Nurturing Creativity". Stone describes poems as thunderous barrelling trains of air swooping off the natural landscape to rush through her, and if she was not lucky enough to have the quickness of pencil on paper then the force would continue on its way in search of another poet to collect its entirety. This personified external creative force is what I feel Cale’s pieces capture on her more or less natural wood planes, in abstract hurricanes of brushstrokes, sustained through her racing to apply and save each stroke before it disintegrates in the tender but swift movement between plastic bag palette to wooden panel.
Her titles: “Synapse”, “The Vigour”, “Pour”, “Pelt”, “Thicket”, “Nausea”, “Mask”, “Bound”, “Surround”, “Hover”, “Tangle”, “Drift”, and “Tousle”, tell a story of human desire to control and escape being controlled by the external and internal forces which drive us.
Cale herself describes her second hand brushstrokes as more of a language and typography than belonging to the fields of painting or collage; those fields themselves marred with so much human history that if they were to claim her work, the absence of individual control and the relevance of creativity itself would be lost. For me, Cale’s work explores the artist’s need to translate external inspiration into that which can be presented for second hand consumption by her audience.
Though many of her works exhibit lovely pastels, earthy browns and shocks of yellow and teal, I find myself most attracted to the large black humanesque forms being pulled along by the tumultuous uplifting strokes. Perhaps they have indeed pulled the artist into the hurricane of creativity, for her studio chair remains in the center of the room, itself exhibiting marks from the creative hurricane, with only the artist’s painted skin, casually draped across its back, left to own it.
We are all prey to inspiration and Cale's work profoundly exhibits this truth.
Tamara Wong is a 4th year Drawing and Painting Major at OCAD University.
Instructor: Catherine Beaudette
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