‘CLOUDS OF MYSTERY, TIME AND LOVE’  

BY BRYAN MCFARLANEClouds of mystery, time and love characterize Cindy’s recent paintings and video images. Clouds that sweeps us into a place where we feel the epitome of calm only to be thrust into a threatening space, deep within the darkest recesses of our psyches. Only to be saved by invisible outstretched hands of light which bathe our bodies and mind with complete assurance? In her vision it seems only then, might we be delivered by a portion of Zen in action, infused in our body. We might breathe a life that comes only when we are quickened from the death of our souls through an ‘endless time’. We are thus resurrected to a life of awareness as to nature’s unspeakable wonders versus the absurdity of our daily lives. Questions we ask of nature’s prowess thereby provide some answers to natures riddles, which are at times: so near and yet so far from us. Cindy recent paintings and video images thus provide some powerful answers which are sometimes within the proximity and grasp of these talented artists. She is brave enough to depict its illusive nature. We might only be able to depict the dimensions whose perspective we are allowed to behold within our finite minds, and a perspective that might only be comprehended through metaphysics. There is a sense of distance that we feel as we are sucked into the vast infinite spaces of her paintings. Through endless depths, mingled with the air we breathe and the breadth and height of eternity. Cindy beckons’ the gods to call upon us human’s to make our beds with them and be comfortable. We cuddle under under the visual and mythological protection of her work as we are nothing unless we become part of the harmony that is inevitable when our bodies disintegrate into it’s particles and we exist for a moment ‘colorless’ –black and white with innumerable shades of panes grey and yet colored by light. Cindy woos our psyches to be blown softly and quietly as part of the dust particles when transformed into inevitable majestic cloud formations. Like dust particles we return to the clouds and become water again. As Maurice Pointy puts it “Perception is not a beginning science, or an elementary exercise of the intelligence” but attributed to “the person who feels”. Cindy paintings allow the viewers to feel deeply. 

Then there is light which Cindy creates that bounces back and forth and eludes our yearnings to catch it in the palm of our hands as energy which will elucidate our souls. She plays with it as a powerful metaphor which lines the edges that are rarely sharp. Creating silver linings which are sweet. Sometimes, heavy light is soft and malleable, gentle and seductive and soft enough to bathe the landscape of our bodies and in particular; our eyes gently enough for eye salve. Cindy paints with the awareness that without light all things under the clouds will die. Light forces give the power of energy for the process of photosynthesis to take place on the sphere below, which produces the water which nurtures the greenery that we have thrived on and caused mankind to live in a happy state for thousand of years. The light forces that we so easily take for granted. The fragrance and musical opulence of clouds and the vast sky that dances a thousand times within the universe with diverse forms which twists and morphs into their own formations for thousands of  times, within countless millenniums of light years and journey through time. 

 Cindy thus is aware of the ‘metaphysical’ in man/woman, which introduces a horizon which transcends science and verbal expression and / or any written linguistics. She proves though her paintings that there are “numerous situations in life which cannot be communicated with current “trite” technology and which can only be understood by living them. Cindy peruses her paintings knowing that she herself has to yield to their language and that they simultaneously possess her instead of her possessing them. The materiality of the pieces is therefore irrelevant to their real meaning and purpose commercially and intellectually. Owning these paintings are simultaneously wrapped up in coming to grip with ones own need to have a soul. Like TS.Elliot who saw himself within a ‘vortex’ of inspiration from a society/environment and place which he had left behind.  Cindy has found a place which holds her together; her body as the protagonists while her soul sours off to the heavens where she has experienced an immense space with which she is comfortable for ongoing inspiration. She must live in the cosmos and paint there. 

Cindy’s skill at rendering space especially in her darker pieces where the image pulsates and throbs with deep murky and sinister contrast against the edges of the paper are impressive.  She enters clouds of spaces which she dares her viewers to enter. Those spaces if  entered; may never yield a return of impure personhood; as a pure and measured wet kiss in the dark might just suck you away from the familiar to an unfamiliar territorrries of the unknown. The passages of light woo us with a gritty and revelatory longing.  A place Cindy creates where you will inevitaby rest peacefully. Her wet on wet pigments- technique is flawless and leave us refreshed as to the power of chinese traditional ink painting, retained in a contemporary approach to visual naratives with traditional tools rarely seen or used with such flawlessness. Like georgio O’ Keefe , Cindy steers us to a personalized universal landscape  that is immeasurable in scope within our dreams. Large scale pieces are equally viceral turning the viewers head upside, down and right side up, and inside out -with a definite floatation which we yearn to play and experience since childhood. Cindy takes us to a  place where we all want to return aesthetically. A place that shows the depth of a great artistic imagination and the breath of a woman-artist whose tallents reveal to us her universe which is virturally an “expansive womb”.  A womb whose anatomy is as gentle; with rebirth and regenerations of dreamlike hope, tactile yet soothing, with a real experience which characterize a powerful and expansive landscape of the spirit.

Bryan McFarlane is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Massachusetts, at Dartmouth. USA, and an instructor at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in France. A native of  Jamaica in the West Indies. He maintains a studios in Beijing ,China and Kingston ,Jamaica. He is represented by the Naga Gallery in Boston; Mutual Gallery in Kingston Jamaica and Caribbean Art Collection,Caprice Gallery in Berlin,Germany.  Email:brypaint@umassd.edu or http://www.umassd.edu.