The phrase “grin and bear it” seems a little masochistic. The expression is a prompt to not only accept hardship but to smile while enduring it. “Big Bear,” the current exhibition by Amalia Angulo at Kishka Gallery & Library in White River Junction, features seven new 18-inch-square colored pencil drawings. As Angulo describes in her artist’s statement, the “bear” in the title refers to both the animal and the physical and emotional burdens a person might carry.
Some works in the show hint at trauma, while others seem Edenic; the double meaning of the show’s title points to this persistent dichotomy. Once a viewer scratches the surface of these tender drawings, a thicket of linguistic and psychological content emerges.
Angulo was born in Cuba, moved to the United States at age 14 and currently resides in New York’s Hudson Valley. In recent years, she’s become known for drawings and paintings that frequently feature corpulent figures (mostly women) with ear-to-ear grins that are at once ecstatic and maniacal. The female figures in her current show wear more subdued smiles that transmit a feeling of calm.
In Angulo’s verdant and trippy universe, rotund, starry-eyed figures prance amid foliage with a variety of beasts. The animals who inhabit these drawings generally seem benevolent, like guardians of their human counterparts. Given that the creatures are apex predators — the only exception being a horse in one drawing — the figures are always outmatched in strength and size.
In “Woman With a Big Brown Bear in the Woods,” the bear towers over the woman. She stares ahead as the bear glances to the left, seemingly keeping watch over his companion. Angulo’s figures are rendered solid and monumental, like Paleolithic goddesses, yet the hulking animals often make them seem fragile in comparison. Though humans and animals appear to exist in harmony, it isn’t entirely clear that the kingdom is peaceable.
In her artist statement, Angulo alludes to the “family and social dynamics” that influence her work. In “Woman and Big Bear,” a wide-eyed woman with long, golden hair stands shoulder to shoulder with a grinning bear. The animal seems to embrace the woman with its left paw and scratches her in the process. We don’t see the scratch, but blood drips from its claws. While the two appear to coexist peacefully, the hidden injury suggests that sometimes even those closest to us can inflict pain and that the deepest wounds are often invisible.
Angulo’s technique adds an element of tranquility to the work. The colored pencil is built up in layers, giving the curvilinear, bulbous forms a sense of volume. The soft, uniform application of pigment makes the images lush and vibrant.
The artist’s Arcadian fantasies recall the works of postimpressionist Henri Rousseau and the German expressionist Paula Modersohn-Becker. In a recent interview with Juxtapoz Magazine, Angulo discussed her “deep and intense” connection to nature and how her current life in rural New York reflects this ideal. Throughout her work, animals, plants and humans are given the same formal treatment, which contributes to a sense of harmony.
In “Woman and Lion,” the heads of a rosy-cheeked woman and a dark-eyed lion emerge from dense green vegetation. Everything in the scene is balanced, from the little yellow sun that is perfectly framed by a sweeping tree limb to the lyrical striped leaves that frame the right edge of the drawing. The two heads are the same size and the woman’s hair and lion’s mane echo each other. The sense of ease, and the underlying potential for danger, are suspended in a state of duality that echoes throughout the exhibition.
