"Dawn Devereux Charts the Journey of the Self and Soul"

by

Maurice Taplinger

(Gallery & Studio Magazine, New York, June-August 2004)

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Symbolism ran counter to Impressionism. It was a romantic movement in literature, as well as in art, placing subjective emotions above direct observations from nature and also making mythic or symbolic subject matter more central than formal concerns. As such, it fell out of favor when modernism gained historical momentum, and was more or less scorned, or at least ignored, until the rise of post-modernism in the 1970's revived an interest in subjective vision that manifested in a variety of figurative art styles.

Few contemporary artists, however, have breathed new life into Symbolism as convincingly as the Australian painter Dawn Devereux, whose exhibition of acrylic paintings on canvas was seen recently at Montserrat Gallery, Broadway, Soho, New York.

"Visions drawn from the mountainous terrain thay is the emotional landscape of the self" is how Devereux describes her paintings, in which the lone, lithe female nude is usually seen in an atmospheric realm resembling the terrain to which we are transported in dreams. One can draw all manner of conclusions from Devereux's compositions, in which various objects and natural elements serve as symbolic props. The solitary figure, at once sensual and ethereal as it reclines languorously or soars through space, could suggest the journey of the self through life or of the soul theough the afterlife or any number of other possibilities, given the potentcy and complexity of the symbolism in Devereux's paintings.

In "The Pillar," for example, the pale nude figure reclines at the top of a tall structure set within a misty nightscape that could be seen on the most obvious level as phallic. Yet it should also be remebered that in the art of the Greeks and the Romans, statues of the gods often surmounted tall pillars to indicate that they dwelt in the sky. Consider, too, that in Christianity the pillar was also a symbol of spiritual strength and steadfastness, and the multifaceted nature of the symbolism in Devereux's work becomes clearer.

In another canvas by Devereux called "The Door," the figure soars in midair toward a large portal that appears in the nocturnal landscape directly above mounds of earth divided by a narrow winding stream. The door, of course is the opposite of the phallic pillar, a feminine symbol. It is also a holy symbol in another manner different from the pillar, as seen in the architectural ornata of cathedrals, where portals are treated as if they were altar-pieces. Here, too, the symbolism of the stream as the path of life, as well as a source of poetic inspiration, as in the Castalian stream, or the stream that the Queen of Sheba walked through rather than tread on the wood that bridged it. Again, Devereux's composition is richly allusive, as well as magically atmospheric, with its predominance of deep blue hues and evocation of lightbeams, mists and other atmospheric effects.

In this and other evocative paintings such as "The Eruption," "The Watershed," and "The Wave," Dawn Devereux apparently does not contrive her symbols in any calculated manner, but rather allows them to arise intuitively through a process that she declines to analyse, saying, "I do not care to define my work; to try and explain consciously that which is an unconscious expression seems inane."

Her point is well taken, since her symbols speak eloquently for themselves.

Maurice Taplinger, New York

(Gallery & Studio Magazine, New York, June-August 2004)

Dawn's Website no link

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