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General News: Artist's Subconscious Inspires Work
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| Artist Lydia Strawbridge |
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| Click on the flyer for a full view. |
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| Drawing by Lydia Strawbridge |
April 02, 2009
By Ann Taylor Cerone
Lydia Strawbridge is an octagenarian who lives quietly in Cornwall, an artist whose decades of experience help her draw on the so-called collective unconscious to find her creative inspiration. Beginning Saturday, her work will be on display at John’s Custom Framing, on Route 32 in New Windsor.
In one of Strawbridge’s many sketches, a skeletal waif stands at night on a narrow bridge, separating her from a distant cornfield grazed by a pale white dove and an eerie black bat.
For one observer, the work evokes disturbance from the blackness of the night and the menacing hover of the bat over the otherwise peaceful dove. But for another viewer, hope resonates in glow of the moon, the waif’s radiant face and the dove – a symbol of peace.
“There’s a definite equanimity to it,” says fellow artist Jerry Cohen, a photographer from Monticello of the work. “When one person sees the dark, someone else will see the joyousness in it.”
This can be said of the majority of Strawbridge’s work which, for an upcoming show that she has entitled “Visions from the Collective Unconscious: A Retrospective Spanning Years.” The artist’s reception will be held this Saturday, April 4, from 3 to 7 p.m., while the exhibit will be displayed through May 23.
“You don’t make up dreams, they just come. Same with these things,” says Strawbridge, 84. “I just sit down and see if there’s anything there.”
As a young girl Strawbridge was always drawing on the end papers of books or wherever there was a blank space. Her parents sent her away to the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia but she completed only half of the four-year program. Instead, she came to Newburgh and sustained herself by working for a Russian couple who owned a 9-acre farm, selling eggs.
After the couple’s passing, Strawbridge worked another 10 years for Electric Tabulating, a data processing plant in Newburgh. All the while, she was sketching and drawing whatever drew up from her subconscious
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“You can tell [these drawings] come from way down deep,” says Strawbridge.
The central character connecting nearly all of Strawbridge’s works is The Great Mother, or Mother Nature. She may appear as Kali, the terrible Hindu goodness, or Ishtar, the terrible mother. Nevertheless, she is there.
“She’s down in there, in all of us,” says Strawbridge. “And she has so many aspects. That’s why it’s so hard to define her.”
Also present is a stark contrast between good and evil, peace and unease, light and dark. Those familiar with the psychiatric studies of C.G. Jung will find Strawbridge’s work reminiscent of his philosophies about the subconscious mind; in fact, a past exhibition of Strawbridge’s work was supported by the C.G. Jung Working Group.
“In my drawings there’s always some amount of stars, moons, or lights. I don’t know if that’s the soul, or what it is,” says Strawbridge. “I hate it when people ask about these things because half the time I don’t know myself.”
Cohen, the photographer from Monticello, believes art show goers who can see beyond their own consciousness will be drawn to Strawbridge’s works, while those who are too extroverted to do so will walk away thinking her style is simply “weird.”
“It evokes something inside of me – it seems to resonate with something deep inside of me, like something I remember,” says Cohen of Strawbridge’s work.
“See, it’s the subconscious!” interrupts Strawbridge, smiling. “He gets it.”
Comments:
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I can see a band like Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis or The Moody Blues using one of Ms. Strawbridge's works as an album cover.....too bad kids today don't even know what an album cover is! I am so pleased that Ms. Strawbridge's work is getting the attention it deserves.
posted by Gerry Wagner on 04/03/09 at 11:48 AM
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