Mary Armstrong: Leap of Faith
Mary Armstrong (1948-2020)
Tsunami, 2015–17, oil and wax on panel, 24” x 72”
July 29 - October 2, 2021
About The Show
Armstrong conjures a numinous world. A world of shifting seas and ominous waves, of trembling skies and dark divisions, an unsettled, shaken world to be sure, but in which an ascendant optimism persists. The waters will calm, the skies will clear, and the hills remain, nature the balm that heals. - Suzette McAvoy, retired Director of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art
This exhibition features sumptuous and inspired romantic sea- and landscapes by late Boston-Maine painter and Boston College art professor, Mary Armstrong. The work in this show was drawn primarily from Armstrong’s 2019 McMullen University exhibition entitled Conditions of Faith.
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In the beginning, the decision to become a painter is a leap of faith. It was, indeed, a leap for me. The first big leap of faith was to accept the value of art and more broadly, the value of human culture. When I first saw great paintings I had a profoundly humbling experience of not knowing. I did know that on some level I was perceiving something transformational but there was a wide gulf between the object and my ability to penetrate its mysteries. In a contrary way I decided that I had to close that gap, to discover the collected mysteries at the core of the experience. The starting point is curiosity accompanied by trust. My decision to devote the time of my life to painting was fundamentally a decision to choose a particular lens through which to see and filter all the knowledge and experience I could accumulate in one little (for it is brief) life. That particular aperture remains open to the complexity, the diversity and the mystery at the core of human experience.
I have seen how Art connects us, as people, to what is common to our life’s journey; the revelations at the core of shared catharsis and the comfort of shared grief. Art crosses cultural boundaries and unites us and that is good. Inspiration and comfort reside in that vast community of ideas contained in art books, museums and sketchbooks. Faith in this collected memory and its concrete ineffability’s is essential.
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However, making paintings is a very solitary occupation. The painter enters that solitude willingly, sometimes gratefully and sometimes with dread. Painters are choosing to be alone, a lot. It is in the silence of solitude where uncertainty blooms.
Just for a few moments I want to take you into the studio and describe how faith enters into the daily practice of painting, the effort of making one particular object. Every painting is a separate discreet journey. It is it’s own story with it’s own lovely process of trial and error. Faith in the studio is fundamentally tolerating a state of uncertainty. Imagine the empty blank stare of canvas or paper. You have to start somewhere. The process has to become physical. I start with an idea; a spark and then I begin to build a surface with paint, the first layer. This demands focus and physical energy simultaneously. It takes tenacity to remain in the search, finding a way through the dead ends. The initial idea gives way to the immediacy of the moments of change. Every decision, at this point, takes the painter into uncharted territory. This space is a small continent, not an archipelago. The way forward is unknown and the way back is closing in behind you. The birds have eaten all the crumbs you carefully left to guide you back. After entering the valley of despair and failure, the temptation is to give up. The painter acknowledges that she needs help and to solve the problem she will need resources other than the vulnerable and lonely brain. Enter devotion and reverence, meditative contemplation, filling the mind’s eye with effortless awe. At this point, holding still in order to tolerate all the doubt and vulnerability with patience and compassion slowly transforms the fears into a generative force---a new idea, a beautiful possibility. In this moment, there is faith that everything I need in order to proceed is available to me. This feels like a gift of grace, a grace arriving through devotion to the task and love. Finally at this point the painting has enough physical body and begins to proclaim itself as a thing apart, discreet and, yes, unknowable.
There is a very important role in this physical act for the dynamic relationship between the comprehensible and the incomprehensible. The dance is continuous between the two. And, compassion and gratitude are pure energy! Sometimes, great works of art seem to teeter on the verge of incomprehensibility, communicating the quaking vulnerability of the artist’s search. I love the statement (I think in The Old Testament?) that you have to lose your life to save it. That is another expression for a leap of faith. It also sounds like the thought that faith precedes understanding.
As a young painter the lens opens. Complete comprehension is not available so an open mind is essential. Sparks of insight are accumulated shard-by-shard, bit-by-bit. Faith allows these sparks to coalesce to become embodied eventually in to a painting. A painting comes into being through the dance of intention, accident and grace. If there is beauty, it comes from the vibrant connection of matter to pure energy. The painter knows that the work is complete when it has moved beyond her ken. There follows a deep and resonant gratitude for this gift of grace. - Mary Armstrong
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