The Tender Vigil

Alexandra Manukyan unveils 20 new works at a show at Abend Gallery in Denver.

By Michael Clawson

Before she became a painter, Alexandra Manukyan spent 23 years in the world of fashion, which was an unexpected twist in her career after her 1990 arrival in Los Angles from her native Armenia.

“When you study fashion, you also study art history, which allows you to have a historical understanding that informs your work. It really changes your eye and shapes your visual language. I also studied the [Old] Masters for the technical parts that included the reference, the craft, the patience and structure, and also the texture,” Manukyan says. It’s that last element, the textures, that hooked her. “Working in fashion, all day I was around colors, fabrics, feathers, beads and other materials. Your sensibility for those things becomes very keen. I had an understanding of drapery and the sheen of fabric—I had a sensitivity to these things that allowed me to articulate them in my art through lace, porcelain, pearls, furs and feathers. They became conceptual challenges.”

She continues: “Fashion was informing the art, and art history was informing the work. And through that is where I found these timeless qualities.”

She Wears the Season Softly, oil on linen on aluminum gallery wrap, 28 x 22 in.

“Timeless” is a word she uses frequently. When urged to pin her work to a certain period of world history or place, she pushes back. “They are meant to be timeless,” she says firmly. Like a boat unmoored and unanchored that can drift freely wherever the winds, tides and currents take it, her work is not burdened by being staked permanently to a certain time or place. There is freedom in that characteristic—freedom for her and the viewer.

The Porcelain Maiden, oil on linen on aluminum gallery wrap, 30 x 24 in.

What the clothing and textures can do, besides dating the subjects, is convey a sense of frailty and fineness. “What kind of delicacy do these materials possess? And how do these materials associate with fragility, or a contemplative presence?” she asks of her viewers. The viewers will have a chance to respond at The Tender Vigil, a solo exhibition opening April 3 at Abend Gallery in Denver. Manukyan will have as many as 20 new works in the show. All of them will explore her timeless textures.

The Quiet Ceremony, oil on linen on aluminum gallery wrap, 30 x 24 in.

“When looking at the general architecture of the show, I painted lots of birds and female figures. If you notice the females, they are alone and on their own, so the tender vigil is mostly moments where time seems to soften and slow, like a quiet guardianship. It’s not loud. Everything is very calm and steady and there is this luminous presence and personal light,” she says of her latest body of work. “Besides the laces and feathers, the winter air becomes part of the language as well. These are not decorative elements; they’re almost like emotional textures, in that space between stillness and silence. It’s almost a kind of sanctuary, a fragile and enduring space.”

Cathedral of Winged Whispers, oil on linen on aluminum gallery wrap, 18 x 14 in. The Feather-Born Empress, oil on Belgian linen, 14 x 11 in. The Hush of Petals, oil on Belgian linen, 20 x 16 in.

One of the key paintings in The Tender Vigil is The Quiet Ceremony, in which a woman is seated behind several pieces of blue and white pottery. The style of ceramic pottery, thought to have originated in China, is known for its blues made from cobalt oxide. That cobalt color, along with fabric-like layers of ceramic, continue from the table up into the woman’s dress, which complements her fair porcelain-like skin. The subject is draped in delicate ceramic folds, the very definition of “fragile,” and yet she retains strength and power in her pose and delicate gaze.

“These subjects are emissaries between the interior world of the heroine and the exterior world of her emotional architecture,” Manukyan says. “And even as they are alone, they are never isolated. They exist with these subtle environments that are interconnected.”

The Table of Small Wonders, oil on Belgian linen, 24 x 18 in.

In The Quiet Ceremony she uses porcelain, but Manukyan uses other materials—be it pearls, snow, organic matter such as tree branches and leaves, intricate laces, animal furs, embroidery or feathers—to convey other connections between her subjects and the fantastical worlds they inhabit.

“We are very excited about Alexandra Manukyan’s upcoming solo exhibition The Tender Vigil," says gallery owner David Ethridge. “This will be Alexandra’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, with last year’s Elysian Reflections selling 16 of 17 works as of this writing. Alexandra continues to explore the inner life of the feminine, using her now-familiar methods of portraiture and incorporating many elements of her 20 years of experience in fashion to create new and elaborate jewelry, ornamentation, and patterns. I believe this group of paintings will be of great interest to collectors who follow contemporary figurative painting.”