Annabelle Buck – The Life Within – @ Commonweal Gallery

Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, March 8th from 6p – 9p, of The Life Within, self-taught artist Annabelle Buck’s first solo exhibition of paintings at COMMONWEAL.
While her paintings depict friends, family and familiar environments, Buck approaches her subjects with an almost sociological distance—a hesitant intimacy that seems to arise from an acknowledgement of her inability to explain it all. In this way, Buck’s profound insight (and the cleverness of her approach) is that her ultimate solidarity is with the audience. Like us, Buck can only scrutinize these relationships to the extent of her own limited understanding.

“In making an image the story is in the details, which are often quite shallow. I hope my paintings organize these details to the extent that the audience might catch fleeting glimpses of character. I’m interested in what the audience brings to the work—how they project their own relationships upon these characteristics and fill in the gaps. It’s like we’re solving a puzzle together where occasionally you believe you might capture a moment of truth, but you will never really know.”

Exploring this gap between knowing and understanding is observable in Buck’s blunt but precise handling of contemporary cultural and art historical references in her work. A periodical, tapestry or bowl of fruit evade metaphor through their lack of artifice. They’re not dressed up, robbed of sentiment and set off to the side to linger in the periphery, which is exactly the point – this is life and that is what Buck is attempting to capture.