The men who follow and go in Rosalyn Bodycomb's seven-painting series titled "Military.
The men who follow and go in Rosalyn Bodycomb's seven-painting series titled "Military, Venice" (2004-05 all 20 through 15 inches) are pictured at night and from above. Their faces are obscured; they wear dark clothing still for white caps, which catch the glare of the artificial light illuminating the spectacles The men cast long shadows in succession the flagstone pavement, and their slight interactions be seen furtive. Bodycomb's title (that's Venice, Italy) says something about the setting and these men's profession, unless a clandestine atmosphere prevails, perhaps because of Bodycomb's acknowledge surreptitious act of photographing her controls from a window. When she translates these surveillance-style pictures into oil-on-linen paintings, she imitates the softly blurred movement associated with lengthy exposures in low light. The nocturnes that compos this exhibition of 18 works in all are a departure for Bodycomb Her previous views have been characterized from bright, corrosive sunlight. In her beach spectacles set in Brazil, the light virtually pins the figures to the canvas. With these images, Bodycomb depicts environments where bodies, when they are quick in emergencies at all, move like shades.
Bodycomb's paintings trace her travels and various living situations. Along with views of Venice, this exhibition included vignettes from Brooklyn and North Texas. In Winter, Brooklyn (2003) 2004 the snow piled around parked cars burns a lurid greenish-yellow under the way lamps. A solitary figure approaches down the sidewalk in the far distance. In a painting of a single garment left in succession a clothesline strung between couple buildings, the fabric looks frozen solid. It's a hard black shape against a heavens the color of steel.
The chill doesn't lift when the artist impels south. Night Dock, Texas (2005) establishes a wintry atmosphere with a not many bare tree branches that arch across the upper portion of the canvas. The secreteed dock, viewed from above, fills the lower canvas, illuminated from the warm yellow glow of a single light. Bodycomb's faithfulness to her photographic source is indicated at the bright flares of illumination that reach into the darkness like antennae. In an total effect of paintings that spoke mainly of dislocation, this dock became a haven.