Corbett vs. Dempsey

Forest enchantress: Wisconsin painter Gina Litherland comes out of the woods at Corbett vs. Dempsey

By Ruth Lopez. Time Out Chicago / Issue 100 : Jan 25-31, 2007

Gina Litherland has always been fond of winter. There is usually lots of snow, which gives the rural Wisconsin artist a chance to read and paint without a lot of distractions. "It's a very contemplative time," she says. The natural world in all its seasons is the dominant subject in her magic realist paintings at Corbett vs. Dempsey.

That fascination with wildness has been with Litherland since her days in Chicago, where she studied at the School of the Art Institute and fell under the influence of medieval painting, the symbolists and the surrealists. Twelve years ago, she moved with her husband to a converted barn they inherited in the country north of Milwaukee-a brushy property filled with lots of soft trees, birds and critters. "After years of city life, we figured it would be a good place to get work done. And it has been."

From Litherland's studio windows she can see branches all around, which proved particularly useful in painting Winter (shown above). She could just look out and stare at the sculptural bare branches against snow.

Litherland has also remained steadfast in her process of painting with oil on wood. "I discovered working on panel when I was still in school and I never went back to canvas. You can get such detail on it," says Litherland, referring to the smooth surface of Masonite. Litherland applies a monochromatic underpainting and then goes over that with glazes that soak up light. "As I work with successive layers, it really comes alive." She also employs decalcomania, a process of stamping a repeated image used by artists like Max Ernst. You can see this technique in Goose Girl, a painting of a woman gripping a waterbird in a thicket of leaves. "It gives this extraordinary illusion of foliage," says Litherland, who used a leaf on the board and then worked the surface to get the rich autumnal colors of golden yellow, rust and fading green. Goose Girl herself bears a resemblance to other females in Litherland's paintings. Which begs the question: Do these women represent the artist? "Well, she is my favorite actress," Litherland says. "I'm more like the director…I think of my paintings as being very theatrical."

Over the years, Litherland's style has evolved, drawing from her early influences and an interest in synesthesia-where stimulus from one sense can spur a different sense. Or, as she explains, "I see a color and hear a sound; a written word for me evokes an image." The symbolists also experimented in this way, which explains those lines of poems by French poet Arthur Rimbaud (from Illuminations, written in 1874) that appear at the bottom of a number of her works. "The poems are so visual, and the words are selected very carefully." But Litherland is clear that her work is not meant to illustrate Rimbaud's poems. That is partly the reason she has kept the lines in French.

"Translations are always second best. I knew those poets picked the words for the sound, and that can't be duplicated."

Listening to music when she works is another way that she has been inspired by sound. A foray into roots and blues music led Litherland to paint a portrait of Memphis Minnie-who played tricky guitar licks and wrote lyrics. "There are a lot of animals in her songs. Animals are either men she has had problems with-like bumble bees and snakes-or she is bragging about them," Litherland says.

Memphis Minnie is one painting here that is not for sale. It can take years for Litherland to get around to painting an image she has had in her mind, and "sometimes I need to hold on to a piece before I am ready to let it go."