The Paintings of Sylvia Plimack Mangold
Although Plimack Mangold paints everyday objects with meticulous accuracy, she is perhaps best described as a painter of illusions. Her studies of floorboards were made in the 1960s and '70s under the minimalist influence of her husband, artist Robert Mangold, and other contemporaries. These unsettling pictures draw the viewer into an intimate, eerie space. Some images are framed by illusionary "masking tape," painted to look like actual tape, thereby expanding the artist's commentary on the different planes of reality and illusion. Her explorations of color in moody, nocturnal landscapes are tinged with romantic associations. Her recent, highly gestural pictures of towering trees, made in her outdoor studio in upstate New York, evoke a private sanctuary of healing and peace. Brutvan is curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y.; this volume accompanies a traveling retrospective exhibition.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.