Commentary
In her work, Linda Mitchell has created a world inhabited by animals who seem somehow human. In their touching mixture of self-possession and bewilderment we feel a strange kinship. The emotions that these creatures evoke return us to a moment in childhood when we could talk to our stuffed animals and know that they understood just what we meant. At the same time, the animals’ magical sense of animation plunges us into feelings of longing and loss that are freshly encountered at every stage of life.
Mitchell’s animal figures, made from Play-Doh or fabric, appear in mixed media works as painted or photographic images. As sculptures, the animals also have become a part of larger installations. In either case, Mitchell has made works that are densely physical, painted and collaged, using ink-jet prints, scraps of rescued family fabrics, and wood from a threatened studio. These and other elements form a layer of personal witness in Mitchell’s work, reflecting a sense of selfhood, marriage, family ties, and her beloved pet dogs. Then there is the persistent sense that time and memory are permeable, capable of melting together childhood and the present to create fantastic visions that are both emotionally provocative and visually rich, resplendent with color, pattern, and jewel-like nuggets of safety glass.
Mitchell is a prolific artist who delights in a constant flow of creative invention, but throughout her work is a feeling of fleeting beauty, of holding on to yesterday and today, and the recognition of the impermanence of it all. This elegiac quality coexists with a humor and warmth that gives her work its own specific emotional gravity. For instance, in Remnants, a stuffed toy with a melancholy expression quizzically salutes us, accompanied by a vivid pansy and a collaged stand of old fabrics. In No Harm Done, a second floppy-eared dog gestures similarly, but perhaps he is actually comforting his head that has sustained some hidden injury.
With pain comes acceptance, as in Take Me when the elephant Mr. Chuckles, a recurring character, stands on a pier beneath a rain of glass, arms outstretched. In Better in Dreams, in a fragmented mountain landscape another animal seems to be surrendering to the natural beauty, that like personal existence, is always seen as under threat in Mitchell’s work. This feeling of embracing what is vulnerable and what is loved and keeping it whole at least for a while is at the heart of her artistic vision.
– John Mendelsohn |
