Heather Wilcoxon
Mixed media on canvas, 40" x 41" Photo: courtesy Jack Fischer Gallery
Spike Jonze's offbeat hit of the 1990s, "Being John Malkovich," took viewers on a surreal journey through a passageway into the mind of the quirky and gifted actor. Similarly, "Being Heather Wilcoxon," on recent view at the Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, invited the viewer into the complex and dizzying world of this unique and gifted artist. The hefty display of works challenged and slightly disoriented the viewer upon entry. Wilcoxon's drawing, a daily practice inspired by toys, knick-knacks and her fertile imagination, drives the content of the more developed works. Their seductive surfaces quickly draw us into an intimate connection with their bristly content. Skater features a massive, blocky, blue and white striped head, resting in a glowing field of pink, shifting to soft sherbet-orange and mango; As the World Turns imagines the globe as an angry red sphere, sprouting arms and legs in every direction. Eyeballs on long stems roam about the canvas, peering around, while an assortment of feet may be found sheathed in polka-dot spats, or sprouting gnarly, claw-like toenails. The Little Mean and Nasty Film, an acerbic and memorable animated video, offers quirky characters such as a three-breasted stripper who gyrates as her disjointed arms wander hither and yon, fondling and probing. Later in the film, protesters wheel by on roller skates while bearing placards reading "save our planet," "equal rights" and, finally, "fuck war."
There's a clear kinship to Guston, but also to quirky animation found in The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, as well as underground comics. Picasso, with his reinvention of dictator Francisco Franco as a hairy polyp, comes to mind. Artists such as Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn, as well as Guston, were inspired by George Herriman's 1930s era "Krazy Kat" comics, and Wilcoxon certainly also owes a debt to this edgy work. Wilcoxon's world is one where the magnitude of social injustice has rendered protest trivial. Her passion seems often fueled by fury; simultaneously, she can be funny as hell. Her love of painting, and the power of her drawing, is matched by her skill with color and sensitivity of her brush; she's an artist for whom painting is a commitment of lifestyle rather than a choice of medium. Being Heather Wilcoxon reflects a life of struggle--but one with rich rewards.