Energy and Harmony
Brilliant color and a fresh approach characterize Phyllis Kapp's landscapes
By Charlotte Berney
Her
colors shift and soar with the intensity of northern lights, her distant
mountains brood and beckon, and her tiny villages seem wrapped in a dream
or a gentle song. The landscapes that Phyllis Kapp creates appear to understand
that the cosmos contains both raw energy and inner harmony, all taking
place at once. To engage her work is to experience - indeed revel in -
this dichotomy.
With her we fly, with eagle vision, through New Mexico's incomparable backcountry. We watch the sun come up, feel the searing heat of midday, pause while a thunderstorm rolls by, and gaze at a rainbow as stars gather and night falls. In the foreground are an arid land's gifts - prickly pear, yucca, sage, juniper and poplar. In the background, broken buttes and canyons attest to the region's rugged geology. There is a dreamlike quality to the scenes - landscape filtered through the gauze of memory and desire.
Sometimes an artist's work so well evokes a landscape that she acquires special standing in the community. Such an artist is Phyllis Kapp, whose watercolors have come to epitomize the Southwestern land and sky. Kapp is a master of color, wielding a palette in which shades of crimson, fuchsia, magenta, turquoise, yellow and orange frolic together. Kapp describes her process as a "dialogue." "Each painting says something different to me about the land and the sky. As I'm working, I find that one painting will suggest a color or shape to the next painting. For example, I may use coral next to a cobalt green in one work, then develop that combination in my next painting. Since I work on several paintings at once, what happens is a dialogue among my colors that is ongoing. One element calls out to the next, and the process just flows." Kapp finds the fluid medium of watercolor quite appropriate to her process. She works standing and, like a maestro conducting an orchestra, is constantly moving, brush in hand, placing her colors here and there. She listens to a variety of music as she paints, including classical, blues, songs of the forties, and ethnic music. "The music becomes part of the painting," she says.
Her studio faces a garden in one of the oldest parts of Canyon Road. Phyllis Kapp's work today is the result of many strands woven together in her personal history. Born and raised in Chicago and the daughter of Russian immigrants, her desire to draw and paint began in childhood and was nourished by an art-oriented family. On her mother's side, her grandmother did fine embroidery for the Russian aristocracy, and her uncle was a noted painter in St. Petersburg. As an immigrant in Paris, her father designed fashion. Her own art studies included the Chicago Art Institute and Cornell University, where she majored in Art and Botany. Her love of plants continues to this day, evidenced by the beautiful high desert greenery found in her paintings. She was trained as a figurative painter and finds these skills useful in rendering landscapes.
Kapp married and raised four children before she was able to pursue her art full-time. Following the death of her then ex-husband, she made the decision to move to Santa Fe, which she had visited earlier on vacation. The studio she established on Canyon Road in 1984 eventually became a gallery, and today, Waxlander Gallery (from her maiden name) is one of the most respected and active galleries in town. An excellent staff at the gallery affords her the time to devote to painting, her first love. Kapp derives the inspiration for her paintings from walks she takes in the area and from drives around Northern New Mexico and out of state. This year she made two trips to Colorado, where she painted, and says, "Colorado inspired me. The shapes of the mountains and the colors are different, and the terrain is cooler. The mountains are majestic."
These days also include a great deal of international travel. Five years ago, Kapp met Adieb Khadoure Nissan, a native of Persia living in Amsterdam, who was visiting relatives in Santa Fe. After an instant connection and many flights abroad, the two married and in time further enriched Santa Fe's art scene with Adieb Khadoure Fine Arts and Waxlander-Khadoure Fine Art. The two often visit relatives in Europe and Israel and made three trips to Amsterdam this year, where Khadoure's children live. Kapp was delighted to paint cows and windmills in the Dutch countryside. Last summer, they spent a month in Spain, where Kapp painted the mountains and ocean from the Spanish town of Cadaques. This work will be shown in an exhibition at the well-known Carlos Lozano Gallery in Cadaques.
Other exciting developments are in store for collectors of Phyllis Kapp's art. A limited edition of nine tapestries of her work, The Sun's Red Love, is being created in Iran by expert Persian weavers known to her husband, whose family came from villages where rugs were made. Kapp selected wool threads from 300 colors, and these and an eight-color giclee were sent to Iran. Kapp will have the opportunity to inspect proofs of the woven tapestry in order to insure accuracy.
Also planned is a limited edition of armoires featuring Kapp's paintings. "I had been looking for a way to render my work in three dimensions," she says, "and I believe this is an excellent way. I'm really excited about it." One painted image will clothe the outside of the piece in vibrant hues; another painting will glow with color in the armoire's interior. Kapp's work stays fresh because as she says, "It's always changing. After all, nature doesn't do things in the same way all the time. Why should I?" Phyllis Kapp's work has evolved in interesting ways. Compared with her previous work, her compositions have become more complex, and there are more dramatic contrasts. In all the paintings, color is clearly her forte and the aspect that most often draws viewers to her work. Once involved with the paintings, one discovers many lovely details therein. Beyond color and drawing and technique, there is that sense of a vibrating, pulsating, singing cosmic play of the elements - one that nature - and the artist - thoroughly enjoys.
Phyllis'
paintings can be seen at Waxlander Gallery, 622 Canyon Road.
Hours: 9:30-5:30 daily. (505) 984-2202 or (800) 342-2202.