Harvest Angel
Evelyn Statsinger American
While socially and aesthetically linked to Chicago’s Monster Roster as well as Imagist artist groups, Evelyn Statsinger made work that was profoundly individual. She mined the history of art, anthropological specimens, and the natural environment in the production of her unique compositions. In drawings and paintings, she blurred the boundaries between abstraction and representation to produce visionary, often fantastical images as a response to the world around her. In Harvest Angel, a vaguely organic form composed of green, leaflike elements rests atop a complex construction of gray and pink shapes. At the center and bottom, open forms suggest mouths or even eyes. Behind, indistinct stripes animate this surrealistic "portrait." Statsinger’s control of her pigment allows the painting to toggle between precision and suggestion, flatness and depth, presence and imagination.