Margaret Garcia: Small Painting Series

Garcia, Margaret, 2013

Los Musicos Esperando en la Noche

4 figures gathered together while an individual is shrouded , on the same space but outside of the group, co-habitating but peripheral, as though a fugitive or an exile, -- the humanity it depicts is collateral, a storehouse of traditional, vernacular perhaps even psychic existences, one step removed from their unity, their unity embodied more like the crouching enigmatic figure than caring to acknowledge.  The social space is a composite one, made of whole selves but evasive on its permanence, cohesion, or security.

The yellow and red ambience retains its contrast and warming the scene of the landscape as a compound dramatic field.  

Life though tenuous perseveres with a reliance on diffusion of its qualities.  Such qualities--melodies, memories, indeed music as a genre both contrary to yet complimentary of art--visually relieve the landscape of its known risks (which are the same and preserved as a systemic de-centering of humanity by institutional force in a competitive contest of survival) while they cast refracting images of art facing art--paint and music--with a composite and alternating enlivenment.  

98cents General Merchandise

The scene of a discount store recalls the urbanism of art’s evolution in modern times.  It alludes to commercial marketing of human activities, products, and art .  Its geometric division and accentuation of windows, doors, even a barred wrought iron security fence, convey the vitality but also the overall community and its mercantillistic framing, speaks of art vying for its influence but rendered secondary.  The fractions of the small painting would seem to induce an inhibition but the reverse takes place.  Divisibility, partial clarity, even impressionistic suggestion embolden the actions in the small painting.  It contains greater specificity the smaller it is which power of magnification as division brings dramatic energy into the perceivable and aesthetically-affirming scene.  Rather than succumbing to a greater or larger power that would impose austerity or sequestration, the painting becomes a whole out of its partial multiplicity.  More takes place in the small painting as it refers to itself through dimunition it also vehemently relies on its completed evocation, the art work.  

11.5X7 ¾ X 4 oil on wood panel “Reflections on Echo Park”