Velveteen: Artist's Statement by Dorothy Netherland

Dorothy Netherland: Statement for Velveteen, Oct. 2012

For the last ten years I've been making paintings on layered panes of glass, using images from  vintage and contemporary women's magazines as source material. While my work has always expressed my anxieties, the earlier work focused on themes of transience and the unreliability of memory, and the idea that our current sense of self is informed by our often inaccurate interpretations of our personal histories.

My current work explores these ideas from the context of being the mother of a 10-year-old daughter. It often feels as though her childhood is rapidly flying by, and eventually she will come to her own conclusions about whether or not she was provided with a strong enough foundation to negotiate the confusing world around her, a world where increasing emphasis is placed on the surface.  What she has learned about herself so far will influence how she responds to the big choices ahead.  My past is being imposed on her, just as the strengths, shortcomings and limitations of my own parents profoundly affected my life.

I am exploring the constructed nature of self, and wondering where the need for outer perfection originates . I am intrigued by the juxtaposition of the real and the fake. Young women today often give the impression of possessing almost boundless power. I'm fascinated by the idea of Girl Power, and how that relates to artifice and sexuality. Are young women really more empowered now? Is it possible to embrace youth, beauty and sexuality in a healthy, meaningful way which goes beyond the superficial? Is there room for real individuality? Is our obsession with idealized beauty expanding into the realm of the absurd, and are we becoming more and more narcissistic in general?  Whose notions of femininity  and sexuality will my daughter be using as guidelines for her own constructions?

Dorothy Netherland: Turning The Tables – essay by Wim Roefs

Dorothy Netherland: Turning The Tables                                

By Wim Roefs

In her previous paintings on glass featuring imagery drawn from 1950s and ’60s women’s magazines, Charleston, S.C., artist Dorothy Netherland (b. 1962) was addressing “domesticity and family drama and the expectations we have of motherhood.” The Virginia native created images of domestic bliss to suggest the opposite, inevitably but, she claimed, unintentionally making ironic statements that were more personal observation than social criticism.

            In her most recent work, Netherland is taking a similar approach but turning the tables. On herself. While early 2012 paintings such as It Wouldn’t Kill You still explore her own upbringing, in the Femme Fatal and Velveteen series she frets about what she might be doing to her 10-year-old daughter. “Things about ourselves that are internalized but not acknowledged stay with us,” she said in 2009. How does that apply to her daughter?

            “While my work has always expressed my anxieties,” Netherland wrote recently, “the earlier work focused on themes of transience and the unreliability of memory, and the idea that our current sense of self is informed by our often inaccurate interpretations of our personal histories.”

            “My daughter eventually will come to her own conclusions about whether or not she was provided with a strong enough foundation to negotiate the confusing world around her, a world where increasing emphasis is placed on the surface.  What she has learned about herself so far will influence how she responds to the big choices ahead. My past is being imposed on her, just as the strengths, shortcomings and limitations of my own parents profoundly affected my life.”

            “I am exploring the constructed nature of self, and wondering where the need for outer perfection originates. I am intrigued by the juxtaposition of the real and the fake. Young women today often give the impression of possessing almost boundless power. I'm fascinated by the idea of Girl Power and how that relates to artifice and sexuality.”

            And so her new paintings feature a young girl, for which Netherland uses her daughter’s eyes and mouth. As a femme fatal, the girl is lively, self confident, fashion conscious, even alluring. Young but adult, ’50s-era women pester the girl, fussing over her and combing her hair. The Velveteen paintings suggest the young girl is perhaps not hell on wheels but certainly a handful. She’s observed and possibly frowned upon by older ’50s-era women.

            “Are young women really more empowered now?” Netherland wonders. “Is it possible to embrace youth, beauty and sexuality in a healthy, meaningful way that goes beyond the superficial? Is there room for real individuality? Is our obsession with idealized beauty expanding into the realm of the absurd, and are we becoming more and more narcissistic in general? Whose notions of femininity and sexuality will my daughter be using as guidelines for her own constructions?”

DOROTHY NETHERLANDS – New Paintings on Glass

To see new paintings by Dorothy Netherland now available at if ART Gallery, CLICK HERE

To WATCH a documentary of Dorothy Netherland painting on glass, CLICK HERE.

Dorothy Netherland's paintings are painted and silkscreened on the back of glass. The new paintings consist of three layered sheets of glass.

Salon III: January 15- February 4, 2009

For exhibition preview, click here.

For installation images, click here.

For printmaking demonstration schedule, click here.

if ART Gallery

presents

SALON III: The Print Exhibition

January 15 – February 4, 2009

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln St., Columbia, S.C. 29205

Reception: Thursday, Jan. 15, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

& by appointment

Printmaking Demonstrations:

Sunday, Jan. 18, 3 – 5 p.m., Marcelo Novo, Print Gocco

Sunday, Jan. 25, 3 – 5 p.m., Phil Garrett, Monotype

Saturday, Jan. 31, 3 – 5 p.m., H. Brown Thornton, Photo Transfer

Sunday, Feb. 1, 3 – 5 p.m., Steven Chapp, Linocut & Photopolymer Prints

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its January 2009 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents Salon III, an exhibition of prints by gallery artists at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln St., Columbia, S.C. The opening reception will be Thursday, January 15, 2009, 5 – 10 p.m. The exhibition will be installed salon-style at the gallery’s first floor and continues if ART’s salon-style exhibitions; in December 2008, Salon I & II took place simultaneously at the gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia.

Among the printmaking techniques represented in the exhibition are etchings, dry points, lithographs, woodcuts, linocuts, photopolymer prints, embossings, monotypes, silkscreens and photo transfers.

During the exhibition, gallery artists Steven Chapp of Easley, S.C., Phil Garrett of Greenville, S.C., Brown Thornton of Aiken, S.C., and Marcelo Novo of Columbia will give demonstrations of various printmaking techniques. For times and demonstrated techniques, see above.

Artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, John Hultberg, Richard Hunt, Sjaak Korsten, Lucebert, Reiner Mährlein, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Joan Mitchell, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Hannes Postma, Edward Rice, Anton Rooskens, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Brown Thornton, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, David Yaghjian and Paul Yanko.

if ARTwalk: Salon I & II: December 11- 24, 2008

For exhibition installation images, click here.

THE SALON I & II

Dec. 11 – 24, 2008

an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations:

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady Street

&

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln Street

Reception and ifART Walk: Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 – 10 p.m.

at and between both locations

Opening Hours:

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.

& by appointment

Open Christmas Eve until 7 p.m.

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its December 2008 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents The Salon I & II, an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations: if ART Gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. On Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m., if ART will hold opening receptions at both locations. The ifART Walk will be on Lady and Lincoln Streets, between both locations, which are around the corner from each other.

The exhibitions will present art by if ART Gallery artists, installed salon-style at both Gallery 80808 and if ART. Artists in the exhibitions include two new additions to if ART Gallery, Columbia ceramic artist Renee Rouillier and the prominent African-American collage and mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, an 81-year-old expatriate who has lived in the Netherlands since the early 1960s.

Other artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Aaron Baldwin, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Stephen Chesley, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, Jerry Harris, Bill Jackson, Sjaak Korsten, Peter Lenzo, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Matt Overend, Anna Redwine, Paul Reed, Edward Rice, Silvia Rudolf, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, Mike Williams, David Yaghjian, Paul Yanko and Don Zurlo.

Biography: Dorothy Netherland

DOROTHY NETHERLAND

            Charleston, S.C., artist Dorothy Netherland (b. 1962), a native of Alexandria, Va., uses unique techniques to create unique works of art. Since the early 2000s, she has made art by painting, silkscreening and applying photo transfers to the back of glass or Plexiglas, layering up to four panes of glass per work. Most recently, she’s been painting on mylar and attaching the mylar to wood panels, using photos of her teenage daughter and from fashion magazines to create her imagery. She silkscreens and paints flowers to create the borders of her current mixed-media works, sometimes baking the mylar to make the edges curl.  

            Netherland was represented in the 2013 701 CCA South Carolina Biennialat 701 Center for Contemporary Art and the 2004 South Carolina Triennialat the South Carolina State Museum, both in Columbia. She also was included in Studio Visits, a 2007 exhibition at the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art andContemporary Charleston2004 and 2009, each presentations of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. In 2011, the Contemporaries of the Columbia (S.C.) Museum of Art named her Artist of the Year. That same year, she participated in an international residency and exhibition in Neustadt and der Weinstrasse in Germany.

            In 2014, Netherland was in Intersections of Gender and Placeat the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, Miss. She had 2012 solo exhibitions at Mercer University in Macon and Georgia College in Milledgeville, both in Georgia. Her previous if ART Gallery solo exhibitions are D Daysin 2010 and Velveteenin 2012, the latter at Columbia’s Gallery 80808/Vista Studios.

            Netherland has exhibited at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, the City Gallery at Waterfront Park and Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston; Barbara Archer Gallery in Atlanta, Ga.; and Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH. She was included in E. Ashley Rooney’s 2012 book 100 Southern Artistsand Artists’ Homes and Studio, 2014, by the same editor.

To view paintings by Dorothy Netherland, CLICK HERE.

Essay: Dorothy Netherland

Matching Vacuums, 2008

Ink, acrylic, screenprint on glass

18 x 24 in.

SOLD

To see paintings by Dorothy Netherland, CLICK HERE

Dorothy Netherland

by Wim Roefs

Dorothy Netherland paints narrative paintings full of imagery drawn mainly from 1950s women’s magazines, not in the least their ads. Her “cast of characters,” as Netherland calls them, includes an elegant woman, her fingers near her lipstick-red mouth, looking surprised, perhaps even frightened. Another woman with a scary grin embraces a faceless man.

A large iron descending like a spacecraft blows steam on two women, one in a bathing suit, the other in underwear. The silkscreened, coy glamour girl looking over her shoulder just so pops up many times. There’s a stroller, a Chinese takeout box and a little girl in a winter coat holding a doll. And stern looking older men observe, perhaps preside over, much of the proceedings.

Yet Netherland likes to say she’s not trying to be ironic in her work. When pressed, she’s good about it, though. “I am using these images of people posing to sell the idea of the perfect house, family, life, the false idea of attainable perfection. But the narratives I put them in are anything but idyllic. So I do use irony. I just meant that I’m not intentionally trying to make ironic observations. Social commentary isn’t my goal.

“But I am addressing domesticity and family drama and the expectations we have of motherhood. Our first relationships are with family. Family, especially our mother, shapes us. The paintings, including the predominance of women in them, try to reflect this and impart a sense of longing, hopefully. I also am humanizing the women in the images by subverting the original context, which presents a false, surface view of femininity.

“That the people populating my paintings come from an obvious past facilitates my intentions. They become part of someone’s personal, barely understood history. I am turning the women from stereotypes into regular people who represent a piece of memory.”

Memory, especially of personal history, is crucial to Netherland’s work. As a child, she scarcely noticed the paintings her grandfather created on the glass of clocks he made. Nor did she think that she had been affected by finding his dead body slumped over a desk as a child. But now she paints on glass. “Things about ourselves that are internalized but not acknowledged stay with us. Very soon after I started painting on glass, I realized the connection to my grandfather. “Did finding my grandfather contribute to my fear of death? Or did it just become something I would think about later to feel special? Do we all just love to mythologize ourselves?

“I am, in any case, really freaked out by the idea of a once-cognizant mind no longer existing. I just can’t comprehend my own nonexistence. In my paintings, people who are dead or nearly dead are still alive. But my cast of characters being from the past also reinforces the notion of our own impermanence and the brevity of existence. And it indicates the struggle to remember things and our subjective interpretation of past events.”