JACKSON, Wyo. — In their distinctive registers as painters, September and Erica Vhay are each exploring freshness and wonder.
September is doing so by stopping at the precise moment when the personality of her subject appears—no further details are required to capture the essential character of her animal muses. Erica, in turn, is letting the loose gesture of her background washes become an organic foil for human finitude, a juxtaposition of free-flowing nature with exacting figuration. By relinquishing control of their compositions and by trusting their instincts as artists, the sisters present their work as testaments to the wonder found in distillation, the connection forged by vulnerability.
At this moment, Erica finds herself thinking less about the paint, more about the process. She is letting her steps surface; washes have always been an important initial step in her process, but never so evidenced in the finished painting. Now mindfully building her backgrounds, she’s adding more layers and amplifying the texture. This treatment gives the wash—and its metaphor of nature—greater presence. “There’s a dream-like quality to the background, which contrasts the figure in the foreground as reality,” she says. “It’s as if nature and our ordered world are overlapping.” In this juxtaposition, she hopes to stir existential questions: “How often do we truly connect to natural perfection, and let it become a large part of our lives and what we create?” Within the contrast, Erica expresses the joy of connection—an awareness she feels acutely post-pandemic. “The togetherness and re-found joy that I’ve been feeling lately is coming out in the work. Freshness too.”
Meanwhile, September Vhay is testing her tolerance for abstraction—a route she’s wanted to take for a long time, empowered by her series of sumi-ink drawings. The red horses—studies of equine essence—convey character in select, serene brushstrokes. Such distillation requires courage and confidence on the part of the artist. “Telling the whole story is safer, expected,” September says. And yet, restrained eloquence speaks to her sense of spirit and gesture. In the past, she’s fallen in love with her compositions half-finished, when the psyche of the subject suddenly surfaced from the crosshairs of her marks. In those moments, there’s a freshness, a looseness that remains. Now, she is stopping there, a gutsy move that taps the 20 years she’s spent working as a fine artist. “I’m trusting myself more,” she says. “It’s hard to do on purpose. It’s hard to step away and say, ‘It’s finished. I’ve said what I need to say.’” For example, the personality of a Black Angus bull, rendered in raw charcoal, emerged just as September was roughing in the shoulder blade. So she stopped, leaving visible her sketch, the penciling of his flank and leg.
The viewer must engage with the work, filling in details as they desire. “When a piece of art represents a clear gesture, there is a sense of surprise which leads to wonder. The viewer completes the piece.”
Such viewer engagement channels the momentum of the sisters’ parallel practices. As they paint, they text each other continuously, sharing process photos, inviting critique. ‘What do you think? Is this done?’ Inquiry underlines their respective processes, and their resulting work. See for yourself when their shared show opens at Altamira Fine Art on May 24, running through June 4. For more information about Erica and September Vhay, please contact Altamira Fine Art by email— connect@altamiraart.com—or phone—(307) 739-4700.
