New Hampshire Artist Interprets Reality Through Abstract Art

 Check in to most hotels now, and the art that most guests don't notice is abstract and non-representational. The old days of art in hotel lobbies and rooms with quaint paintings of farms, fruit, and rural life have given way to more provocative and imaginative art, such as the piece below by Ann Iroenkae.

In southern New Hampshire, next to the state's largest city, Manchester, lives an artist who deals in visual abstraction so that we can see reality from a unique viewpoint.

Today's article is about a talented artist that you've never heard of. She's not had a showing at any major gallery. She sold her work to a select few clients, yet she's relatively unknown in her area.

 Furthermore, she is kin to thousands of talented writers without a book deal, photographers without a table-top book, artists without a gallery showing, poets without a published collection, singers and musicians without a record contract, and sculptors with no high-profile piece displayed.

My point here is that there are thousands of talented artistic people who don't get the recognition they deserve.

Mark Twain once said, "Fame is other people saying you did something great. Achievement is you knowing you did something great."

Starting with this article, I will be spotlighting people who have made significant achievements in fields that range from art to animal husbandry.

 I'm starting with Jill Racioppi lives in Merrimack, New Hampshire, who happens to be my sister-in-law and my part-time novel editor. By day, she is the ultimate master of Excel formulas and pivot tables at her job at an engineering firm. By night and on weekends, she has been painting for several decades, honing her craft and selling her work.

Jill's composition style is abstract art, which uses the visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.

Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, supported by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. But by the end of the 19th century, many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time.

Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and non-representational art are all closely related terms. They have similar, but perhaps not identical, meanings.

Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art.

For most people who may be familiar with art, the most notable names in abstract art include Wassily Kandisky, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and, of course, Pablo Picasso.

Jill's art delves into geometric abstract art, which is about shapes, lines, and angles, and how they're positioned in a space.

In one of her most expressive pieces, shapes, lines, and curves, create a sense of watery flow and oceanic drifting into the ether. Notice the pale, earth tones that contrast with the buoyant hovering of the shapes.

Lines and shapes continue off the canvass, creating a sense of a world we cannot see but intuit. 

Jill's work often uses geometric shapes and forms, along with the simplification and reduction of imagery, coupled with a precision and symmetry that emphasizes order and structure.

This piece captures our eye and gently pushes toward the rightward flow of the canvass. Here, colors are bold, dissonant with one another and clash by shape, design, position and meaning. 

Here, embryonic flow is replaced by discordant mayhem. While a fish eye scowls at the viewer, hidden scrolls tempt us to follow the current, while purples, greens, and blues assault our sensibilities of order. It's a masterpiece of contradiction and confluence.

Here, Jill abandons the visual security of geometry for the helter-skelter pastiche that merges Pollock, Kandinsky and Mondrian into a mélange of hues, textures, shapes, globs, and contours. 

The art work challenges the eye with hidden visual parlor tricks throughout, from the tentacles to the floating protoplasm. It's a work designed to unsettle and to make the viewer work at comprehension.

Finally, a recent work by Jill illustrates that she can break her own mold and go off into unpredictable and exciting artistic journeys. 

 

Here, color is transformed into a two-tone universe of black and beige. By design, the canvas resembles a pillar, and here Jill has drawn rectangular shapes on the top and bottom that resemble the base and capital (top) of a pillar.

The design elements draw the viewer's eye up from the bottom and down from the top, an ingenuous sleight of hand. 

While the design elements are largely geometric in nature, there is a deliberate haphazardness about the piece that counteracts the structure of the geometry. Again, it's as if Jill is performing as a magician, showing us visual elements of art that mean one thing or point one way, and then abruptly pulling another visual rabbit out of her hat, or palette.

 Jill Racioppi lives with her husband, Paul, an exec in the non-profit world, in Merrimack and has a daughter, Elizabeth, who just graduated from the University Of New Hampshire with a Master's degree in History. 

Just because she's not famous doesn't mean that she's not a talented artist.

If you are interested in art, I suggest a trip to the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire, where you can also book a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright homes. Jill may even go with you, especially if you buy her ticket.