In the Stillness, Art and Spirituality Emerge
In the Bible is the expression, “Be still, and know that I am God.” This state of stillness, of connecting to our inner consciousness, can only be achieved through some form of meditation. This can be prayer, in whatever form you express your spirituality. It can also be a zen achieved while viewing or making art. The exhibition opening October 6 at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in Lower Manhattan showcases the work of Jan Dilenschneider and Lynn Mara, two Connecticut-based artists whose work invites you to walk into their canvases to think, to rest, and to connect. There Will Always Be Light, There Will Always Be Hope, comprised of more than 40 works, is about communing and communicating, with nature, with your self, and with what you define as spiritual. Light and hope have been harder to find of late yet this particular show, in this particular venue, will remind you where they are.
The Sheen Center itself is built upon hope and light. Its origins date back to 1891 when Archbishop Michael Corrigan, the Archbishop of New York, asked two colleagues to establish a mission church for immigrants living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. From its beginning as The Italian Mission of Our Lady of Loreto, the center evolved into the Holy Name Mission, as part of Catholic Charities, and served those experiencing homelessness. The Centre housed a library, cafeteria, pool hall and theater. And while both the Centre and The Church of Our Lady of Loreto closed in 2011, the building, thoroughly renovated, reopened as The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, in 2015. Today it houses two theaters, rehearsal studios, and an art gallery.
Jan Dilenschneider and Lynn Mara were first introduced through the Center’s director of development MaryLou Pagano. Both artists are members of the esteemed Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, CT, yet hadn’t met before a winter 2020 art show brought all three women together. Scheduled for separate exhibitions this fall at the Sheen Center, Pagano saw a more powerful joint venture. Named There Will Always Be Light, There Will Always Be Hope by Dilenschneider, the exhibition’s mission parallels the Center’s, providing an intellectual and emotional exploration of faith, through the arts. Against the backdrop of increasing COVID concerns, these paintings—Dilenschneider’s contemplative, oil on canvas, natural scenes; Mara’s commanding mixed media paintings—elicit joy, strength, and endurance. The form of expression your faith takes is yours to define—art has no spiritual denomination. Yet art, as demonstrated through this work, can lead to a divine sense of stillness where that light and hope exists.
A self-described Expressionist whose work has been shown nationally and internationally, Dilenschneider’s eye is drawn to the everyday beauty around her, nuances that elude a distracted world, subtleties that we take for granted. She is as fascinated by a dramatic cloud formation against the Long Island Sound sky outside her studio window as she is a field of birch trees, a tree-lined road in Provence, or a chicory leaf from the grocery store (“talk about getting inspiration everyplace” she laughs). Known for her exquisite attention to the slightest billow of a cloud or shade of a silhouette, “the little thing is the inspiration” she says. Dilenschneider’s studio is peppered with magazine pages, catalogs, twigs and a particularly enticing leaf plucked recently from a floral arrangement as she passed by, its curve and sense of movement too striking not to capture on canvas.
Fascinated by these wondrous, easily overlooked details, they are often what strikes the emotional chord. “I want people to stand in front of my painting and feel something. If they don’t, I’ve just thrown paint on a wall. I don’t want to record exactly what was there. I want to impart a feeling, an emotion.” And it’s what transitions the viewer from merely looking at the painting to experiencing it on all sensory levels. “That to me makes it artistic.”
Not to mention Dilenschneider’s extraordinary sense of color composition—she’s mastered the effect of simultaneous contrast, “the tendency of a color to induce its opposite in hue, value and intensity upon an adjacent color and be mutually affected in return,” defines Merriam-Webster. Dilenschneider calls it “singing.” “Yellow and the blue, the blue and the violet. I have a whole set of colors that just talk to me that way.”
“Do you see the impact of that light, on those leaves and the water and the shimmer,” she points out while discussing a work in progress, “…that’s where, to me, the art is.” “And I’m really into mist now. I’m trying to mist everything,” she adds. “Because it has an emotion to it. And because I love J. M. W. Turner… People say where does your inspiration come from. It comes from your life…”
Mara paints with power; her work exudes self-awareness, a desire to connect with truth. “I’m obsessed with truth,” she reveals. Painting is “an expression of joy and love and gratitude.” Calling the pandemic a “transformative time” in her career, Mara—who works up to 12 hours each day, following a routine of exercise, prayer, parenting and painting—credits morning walks during lockdown with an epiphany. In spring 2020, she noticed “how all of nature was completely at peace” and marveled at its endurance. “These tender little shoots were coming through the frozen ground, it almost seemed impossible.” It became a metaphor for the moment. “That same spirit is pushing us up and out.” And it’s drawn from Mara a renewed energy. She paints with abandon through a multi-layered process that’s part brushstroke, part sculpting, part collage. She experiments with stencils, graffiti and Pop Art—a nod to Warhol here and there. Inspired also by Helen Cantrell, Richard Diebenkorn and Fairfield Porter, Mara’s process and palette reflect a strong sense of self and yet, she explains, it’s only recently emerged. “I actually got rid of my fear of failure and gained a real confidence.” Her morning walks during lockdown, her return to stillness, revealed an inner calm that may have been innate to her work yet was never fully explored until the pandemic offered the artistic and emotional space. “I lost my fear and my self-conscious. It’s really changed things… That’s where the wisdom comes from, silence,” she adds, “when you’re not letting the noise in.”
Similar to Dilenschneider, Mara’s colors interact, “harmonize” as she explained, “they all begin to speak to one other.” Layer upon layer upon layer of color and texture through mark making, creates a base from which she “sculpts out.” Her work runs big, as does her messaging. Some pieces carry words or a statement to engage the viewer, yet without projecting a singular intention. Her work reminds us to Smile, It’s Contagious and that Life is Beautiful. Despite the size and impact of the painting, there’s an intimacy in the details, designed to evoke an “exaltation of spirit, something that lifts you up.” The work is bright, exuberant and open.
There Will Always Be Light, There Will Always Be Hope brings full circle Cardinal Dolan’s vision for the Center, to “highlight the true, the good and the beautiful…to deepen, explore and challenge ourselves” as the mission states. “Art and culture are critical for reflection, entertainment, and renewal. Artists’ interpretations are often what we need to make sense of things around us,” His Eminence shared with Art New England. “I am so pleased that two of my favorite artists will have work on display at the Sheen Center. Jan Dilenschneider and Lynn Mara both show incredible skill and talent in their paintings. Their exhibit is what we all need now.”
While it’s the pandemic that inspired much of the work, as well as Dilenschneider’s title, the path to finding light and hope exists within. She reminds us that “art can help if you let it come in.”