Local artist talks painting, vulnerability, and the normal life of a three-legged dog
Egan Franks Holzhausen is preparing for a solo exhibition at Light Gallery + Studio this Friday and joining the Hay Yah House Show later in the month.
Matisse described his paintings as “something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” His cheery colors countered the gray of a war ravaged Europe. It wasn’t surprising when Egan Franks Holzhausen sited him as a major influence. Like Matisse, she offers her audience playful pinks and yellows, canvases compact with ambiguously familiar scenes.
There’s a bit of the Chicago imagists in her work, too. Franks Holzhausen graduated from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2013, well acquainted with the cartoon-like disfigurations of Jim Nutt. In her own oeuvre, she includes characters with stubbly legs, green faces or squirmy tongues snaking from their mouths. She portrays figures caught in the act of speaking, belching, grinning, and grimacing.
The intense absurdity of her characters places viewers in a comically bizarre experience: we are onlookers, amused and empathetic, but self-distanced from these plebeians.
In “Meat Boy,” two wide-eyed, dough-skinned figures stare at us, embracing one another, conjoined by a striped shirt. Below them an orange cat paws a sirloin. In a mirror reflection one of the boys fondles a faceless mannequin with curly yellow hair.
“I’m interested in a hide-and-seek element to figuring out implied narratives,” says Franks Holzhausen. In her artist statement she writes about her intuitive process that invites open-ended interpretations contingent upon viewers’ memories and experiences.
“I approach each painting spontaneously: bouncing shapes off one another, piecing together a puzzle at the base, thus opening up different areas to add, overlap, and fill with imagery, pattern, or more shapes in the steps that follow,” she explains. “This approach reflects the disorganized memory of events that often happens while trying to remember stories or pictures from the original concept.”
Another signature of Franks Holzhausen’s work is the three-legged dog. While hiking the Appalachian Trail a few years back, her dog Uncle Muscles went missing. In the lapse he was hit by a car, lost a leg, and then miraculously reunited with Franks Holzhausen and her husband.
“There’s this play on vulnerability,” she says. “We’re all disabled in some sense. A lot of people pity a three-legged dog, but if you have one, you know they can run as fast as other dogs, and swim. He leads a normal life. It’s the imperfection of it.”
Franks Holzhausen identifies with this imperfection. She sees herself in the unassuming gestures of her subjects, the simplicity of potted plants, the three-legged dog. In portraying the endearing quirks of ordinary life, she paints with sincerity and affection.
Franks Holzhausen’ solo exhibition “Conversations in the Other Room” runs June 1 through 28 at Light Gallery + Studio. Her works are also featured in a June 29 Hay Yah House Show, alongside folk artist Reb Roberts.
