Painter Ellen Liman could be said to have an obsession with two subjects: flowers and readers on the beach. It is a wonderful set of preoccupations that this Chilmark summer resident explores with sophisticated innovation. She brings her floral still lifes to the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center beginning Monday, August 17, and her beach readers to the Chilmark library on Saturday, Sept. 5.
Ms. Liman’s son, film producer and director Doug Liman, has created a garden for his mother that is filled with colorful flowers. “I love that he has these fabulous flowers,” the painter says. She no longer needs to rely on the West Tisbury Farmers Market to feed her flower fascination.
“I’m into movement and organization,” she explains. “Once I set it up, I’ve already made the painting.” The choices that preoccupy her include color combinations, the shape of the containing vessel, the cloth — usually an item of her clothing — that the floral arrangement sits on. These decisions result in abundantly colored, richly textured work that is remarkably varied.
“I have a whole collection of vases with different shapes,” she says. “I’m very concerned about the location of the arrangement and what’s in the background.” In “Chilmark Flowers on a Table,” one corner of the painting offers a snippet of Squibnocket Pond. “It’s small, but it situates the painting,” Ms. Liman says. Another corner depicts a tiny section of her sun-filled studio overlooking the pond. “I’m thinking as an abstract artist, but ending up with a figurative picture,” she adds. She never paints on a white canvas, preferring instead to have a color background to play off. “The paint is very juicy,” she says. “I use a lot of knife. That’s why it is very thick.”
Ms. Liman began painting on the Island 25 years ago, when she and her late husband, Arthur Liman, summered in Makonikey on the north shore, and her paintings of the shore from that period incorporate a very different palette than her views of Squibby on the south shore. “I just love the light,” she says in describing one of her marinescapes from that period in her career. “Everything there was so flat, with very low clouds — very peaceful.”
Now situated in a cottage overlooking Squibnocket Beach in the summers, the artist has been drawing beachgoers for several years. This year she’s taken the drawings she makes on the beach and turned them into paintings and collages. Many of her beachgoer canvases depict arrangements of people, much like an abstract version of a littoral community where people retain their individual nature. In explaining the process by which she produces these multiple portraits, Ms. Liman says, “I cut out the drawings and paste them on a board. First I photocopy the drawing. That allows me to adjust the size. Then I rearrange all the people and paint over them.” Prints of her beach readers as well as the originals are available.
“My signature work — what I’m known for — is color, and sophisticated organization. Primary colors. I practically never use black. Instead I use pure color,” she says. This painter likes to work large. “The larger you are the freer you are — bigger brushes, bigger canvases,” she says. Even so, she will also exhibit a group of smaller paintings, ones that allow her to experiment. There she may use a more pastel palette, or make the paint less textured. “I saw this one hydrangea,” she says, then decided, “I’m going to see what I can do with one flower. I had a harder time with one to get to the essence of the flower.”
“Chilmark Flowers on a Table” illustrates how the artist’s technique integrates movement at a subtle level. “The stem of a flower is bent. Everything’s purposely angled, and a little bit off — not in proper perspective on purpose — in the manner of Cézanne.”
The blues in “Martha’s Vineyard Flowers” illustrate how Ms. Liman uses color. The blue hues are “not so cool any more,” she says. “Actually the warms are cooler. I also needed something that would recede. It brings out the background.” The flower that achieves that effect is not real, but made up. “My mission is not to be totally literal.”
Ms. Liman, who winters in Palm Beach, where she operates a gallery, suggests her new work is much more complex and sophisticated. A show, she says, makes her focus — very good for an artist.
“Ellen Liman Flowers,” Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, August 17-31. All proceeds will go to the Film Center. mvfilmsociety.org.
“Ellen Liman Beach Readers,” Chilmark Free Public Library, Sept. 5-Oct. 1. chilmarklibrary.org.
