I met Caren Canier back in 1987 when I worked at the Schoelkopf Gallery on 50 West 57th street. She was represented by the gallery then and until its closing in 1992 (when Mr. Scholefkopf passed away from leukemia). This past year, I asked Caren to exhibit her work at Gilbert Gallery at Miss Porter’s School and to be the Prescott Visiting Artist (that is, to give a talk to the school and a critique to the students). I was delighted that she accepted the offer. She had a wonderful show and gave a fabulous talk.

She began her talk with this painting that commemorates her relationship with her art undergrad teacher. Friends sets the tone for her work, paintings about those she loves.

Friends oil on canvas 71 X 81″ 1978

She also showed us this early work that was an assignment in art school and originally had a horizontal format. She later cut off about a foot of the painting at its lower edge.

Two Women Having a Conversation oil on canvas 36 X 36″ 1975

Seeing Caren’s work for about a month in the Gilbert Gallery at Miss Porter’s School, I was especially enjoying the relationship between her pastels and paintings, the way the composition in L’Amica Geniale and in Storia del Nuovo Cognome opened up more in the painting and the reworking of particular scales and juxtapositions (as in Degas’ Dance Master).

L’Amica Geniale and in Storia del Nuovo Cognome oil pastel on paper 15 X 22″ 2017

I was imagining that the pastels came first, and she later confirmed that is so and the oil paintings were also preceded by some acrylic studies.…The expansion of the format in each of her paintings made me think of how Stanley Lewis reconfigures his compositions sometimes. (He had a show here at Porter’s quite a few years ago).

L’Amica Geniale and in Storia del Nuovo Cognometoria  oil on panel (Elena Ferrante) 30×40″ 2019

I also liked the design/construction of Caren’s compositions that suggested a relationship to de Chirico and maybe Balthus. And the presence of Caren’s paint application, the opacity, the confidence of the color as color, subtle and resonant. Her painting of her parents was touching. I liked that subject and her feeling toward them. The window paintings so successfully carried across the gallery and took me out to a peaceful place, an afternoon walk for the spirit. I later had a more clear sense (both via correspondence and from her slide talk) of how she made a lot of collages. She worked in collage with paint over it for many years when her two children were young. These playful collages that have elements of Muybridge, Ellie Nadelman and others, as well as many literary references, made way for her subsequent oil paintings.

Another painting that resonated during her talk was this one:

The Kitchen oil on canvas 44 X 48″ 1986

I spend a lot of time with her painting called A Fall. The gestures and positions show mastery of the language of these forms, their succinct narrative message, as in Giotto. And then that still life on the bureau is suggestive, of course, of Bailey’s still lifes. The shadow under the furniture arrives as one color and leaves as another (burnt umber to an olivie raw umber), the kind of transition Bill loved (and would point to, in Hopper). The diagonal of the chair, the gentle decline of the cane, all set us up for witnessing the fall. And the hold of the woman is made palpable/empathized by the near juxtaposition of the vertical striped (mauve and quiet yellow) chaise. Then that light in the distant room is so delicate and of a different nature than the raking light in the foreground. The light suggests a coming event, an after time. Blue becomes green becomes purple…

Fall oil on canvas 19 X 18″ 2021

I later learned that this painting had some personal genesis, in reference to some specific people we know, and that Caren had made some drawings that build off of some of the Italian paintings, depositions of Christ. Indeed, the subject was iconic…

Caren’s paintings led me to explore My Brilliant Friend. A colleague here at school had read Ferrante’s books and noted that she recognizes the story in Caren’s L’Amica Geniale.

After a winter break of a couple weeks, it was nice to be back in the company of Caren’s paintings and pastels. I had again seen the Sienna show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enjoyed the Duccios especially. I could feel some affinity with Caren’s work in remembering them and seeing her color, design, sense of event and place.

I learned that she had spent a lot of time looking at Sienese and Florentine paintings. The warm color in Caren’s paintings was like a hearth emitting a palette and compassion of Mediterranean lumination.

Studio oil on canvas 18 X 19″ 2022 (as it appeared in the exhibit in Gilbert Gallery). Here is a link to the full show.

Her painting called, The Studio, made me think of how being in the studio is sometimes like a game of solitaire. Those cards, like tableaus, take their places on the wall, sorted before, in the mind, on the table, all within the architecture of the day as enlightened from above, informed and reflected by the light of nature as well.

It was amazing to come in and see her show each morning.

Caren and her husband Langdon Quinn (a wonderful, skilled, and masterful painter who also showed at Schoelkopf in the eighties and early 1990s) arrived in Farmington on a Wednesday evening and then the next morning met my students; and Caren gave them a critique followed by a slide show in the Hacker Theater (to the whole school, about four hundred people).

My students treasured the time with Caren! I heard many compliments about her talk and the slides. One student (who is not in that group but was in the studio last year and was back that afternoon, and is a huge admirer of the mystical painter Carrington) said that as soon as Caren talked about painting what you love, they were completely fired up. Another student and I were captivated by and still thinking Caren’s Three Friends painting, an early one. And I admired her Joyce painting (Albergo Sole).

Above: James Joyce and Homer mixed media with oil on panel 40 X 50″ 2008

Below: Albego Sole mixed media with oil on panel 40 X 60″ 2013

Last fall I had finished reading Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey by Daniel Mulhall…It helped me make some way into the actual text. Caren’s painting of the Kitchen (with vase in middle) and the one inspired by Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude had captivated and stirred me…I realized that both authors open facets, vantages, and conclusions of a narrative that have potent parallels in painting.

One Hundred Years of Solitude mixed media with oil on panel 40 X 60″ 2017