The latest body of work by Denise Stewart-Sanabria emerged from the depths of the December doldrums, when the long, dark days and forced festive cheer of the season seemed unending and inescapable.
For Paradise Found, a new show on view at Robert Lange Studios from June 5 through 24, Stewart-Sanabria decided to tap into the promise of spring and “go full blast with color,” explains the artist. “These paintings were deliberately created to project a lot of vitamin D—to inject sunlight and joy directly into your brain.”
Mission accomplished.
Tchotchkes at Paradise Lake, oil on linen 48 x 72 in.
One might classify Stewart-Sanabria’s playful assemblages as still life, but the artist sees her compositions as “anthropomorphic, staged culinary dramas.” She consciously began applying this idea to her work after seeing the elaborate dioramas made by theater students in their set design courses. (At the time, she was teaching fashion illustration at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville). Once the concept of a stage or set takes shape in your mind, it’s easy to see her paintings as scenes in a theatrical performance, where the players may seem cast willy nilly, but in fact, hold clues to the artist’s interests and influences. She often incorporates references to the Age of Versailles, an era defined by indulgence—a word that effortlessly translates to food, and specifically sweet treats, which play a central role in her pieces.
Pecked Upon, oil on canvas, 36 x 18 in.
In Tchotchkes at Paradise Lake, heads of napa cabbage, oversized pears, flowers and candy rocks create a landscape where flamingos populate a pond of bright blue pastry glaze, pooling at the base of a “waterfall” cascading off a stack of ramekins. “It’s a lot of the same thing I was doing as a little kid,” says Stewart-Sanabria. “I had tons of dinosaurs and troll dolls and creatures and matchbox cars, and I’d bring in things from outside to create these scenes… These are more of an adult, sophisticated version of that.”
Feast of Cherries, oil on linen, 30 x 24 in.
Her grown-up scenarios often humorously juxtapose elements of foreign history and culture with the stereotypical American. In Hauling Whoopie, we see the dainty French macaroon alongside its oversized, sloppy American counterpart, amid an equally eclectic and delightfully dizzying backdrop of pattern and color.
In works like Pecked Upon, where the birds and flowers in the wallpaper intertwine with the bird vase and flowers in the foreground, Stewart-Sanabria takes three-dimensionality to the brink of trompe l’oeil illusion. The same is true in Feast of the Cherries but, this time, the birds are interacting with dangling cherries that the artist “speared onto toothpicks and hung with thread so they appeared to be raining down on these hungry creatures engaged in a bit of gluttony. Even the tulips have become sentient and are intent on eating the cherries,” she explains.
Hauling Whoopie, oil on linen, 36 x 30 in.
Confections run deep in Stewart-Sanabria’s blood. Long before she worked as a commercial baker (she still bakes her own subjects when she can’t find what she wants at the store) her grandfather worked in a donut factory. “My father grew up eating day old pastries,” she says, “and when he would make up bedtime stories, the characters were always baked goods and he would anthropomorphize them, like pancake men breaking into a donut factory to steal donuts. This was mythologized in several generations of my family!”
Ring in spring with Paradise Found, which opens June 5 with a gallery reception from 5 to 8 p.m. in Charleston, South Carolina. —
Robert Lange Studios 2 Queen Street • Charleston, SC 29401 • (843) 805-8052 • www.robertlangestudios.com
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