Aneka Ingold looks back on her childhood and sees a common sight for many adults: an awkward kid trying to communicate with the strange world they live in. “I definitely struggled. I was a sensitive and quiet child, but that’s where drawing came in for me,” she says. “Art was a language that was my own. It allowed me to connect with others.”
Art is many things, but at its most basic level art is exactly what Ingold says: it is language. It’s a way for a person to communicate an idea or emotion. To share an experience or an idea. To speak through color and form.
Ode to Georgia, mixed media, 28 x 20 in.For Ingold, art as a form of language bears similarities to the spoken word: it can whisper softly into an ear, or it can scream into the night, echoing off the land and piercing into the sky. It can be both gentle and ferocious, and everything in between. Ingold’s newest show, She is Fierce – The Bold and Beautiful Women of Aneka Ingold, will open October 1 at RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan. The title is fitting.
“’Fierce’ is a great word. It contains my whole journey as an artist, which is so much a journey of survival. Going back to that time as a child, art helped me survive and find my way in the world. It has led me to where I am today,” she says. “Without some tenacity, and some fierceness, I don’t know I would be where I am. It requires a persistence, especially for women artists because misogyny is built into the system in places. This is why I make art about women—because they have to be fierce to survive.”
Tranquility, mixed media on panel, 9 x 9 in.Some of the work in the new solo show includes entries from her Transient Moments series, which are portrait-like paintings of women’s faces amid patterned or abstracted backgrounds. “These are images that capture a moment in time as these women experience some kind of emotion. I made them when I was taking a break from the larger works that required more problem solving and orchestration. The stories are still symbolic, but less elaborate,” she says. “The whole story must take place in the face and eyes. And because you don’t see any lower, they can’t even use their body language. It’s all about the emotion conveyed in the face and eyes.” The pieces are titled after emotions and virtues: Benevolence, Contemplation and Tranquility.
Formidable, mixed media on paper, 72 x 48 in.
Tributary, mixed media, 50 x 40 in.
Other works in the show include several of her larger, more allegorical images of women interacting with nature and wildlife while standing in abstracted realms made up of pure color and shattered forms. They are Formidable and Tributary. These works are bursting with symbolism that speaks to women’s identities, their bodies, their unique sense of place in the world and their roles as mothers. These paintings, teeming with surreal imagery and magical beauty, and frequently featuring self-portraits or personal forms of joy and anguish, are establishing Ingold’s place in the art world as an American Frida Kahlo, someone who has found her voice within deeper ideas about what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. “The women in Aneka Ingold’s works radiate an intensity of gaze and spirit that feels at once intimate and universal,” says Joi Jackson Perle, RJD’s gallery director. “They embody resilience and self-definition, while honoring the enduring strength of sisterhood.”
Chastain, mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 in.
While most of her paintings speak to women, two of the works in the show, Chastain and Ode to Georgia, speak to the resilient power of two specific women—actress Jessica Chastain and modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe, both champions for women’s rights. Ingold chose to paint O’Keeffe as a younger artist, before her more iconic years later in her long life. “I came across these great photos that provided a window into her early that we don’t get to see very often. It was a time before she was so established. The photo was taken by her long-time partner, Alfred Stieglitz. She was so young and vulnerable, and I see in her eyes that it’s her way of confronting the male gaze,” Ingold says. “The background of the painting is from her piece Red Canna from 1924. The blue and green in her clothing is symbolic of her composure and stoicism. The shell is something she painted often, and it represents the natural order of things, particularly with the Golden Ratio.”
Benevolence, mixed media on panel, 9 x 9 in.
Ingold, who lives with her two children in Florida, does not have a conventional studio, but rather her bedroom, where paintings can be looked at right up until she closes her eyes to sleep and first thing in the morning when she wakes up. As appealing as a larger studio sounds, her arrangement is strangely perfect for her. “My process is intuitive and I’m happy with it,” she adds. “Going back to that struggle an artist feels—you have to struggle a little. If the painting were all done in my head, I wouldn’t want to make it anymore. So much of it happens when you’re struggling with it.” —
Contemplation, mixed media on panel, 9 x 9 in.
RJD Gallery 227 N. Main Street • Romeo, MI 48065 • (586) 281-3613 • www.rjdgallery.com
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