Surrealism is certainly potent in the delicate works of Sharon Shivel. When I went to view them at the Parkland Library while on display until the end of August, I could not help but want to dissect them all. Each of them tells its own story, taking us back to the prevalence of nature and in tune with the realities of today. The works are dynamic and certainly opposed to the discrepancy-specific environments that each composition entails. Here I explore each of Shivel’s acrylic intricacies and attempt to anatomize the message that she finds and portrays from nature.
“Hope on the Horizon” is an acrylic painting on canvas, with overtones of connotation, and diversions like puzzle pieces that surrealism supplies. The bodiless configuration of the female suggests that the rest of the self is in the background. The emotions are revealing of the water, and the consciousness within the sands. Her roots in the forefront seem to be a bid to cover the mystery that interestingly and inadvertently tells all by the irony of only her right eye being exposed. It is the eye that is the focal point that’s applying the symmetry, and by its subvertical alignment before the integral of vision displaces at the horizon.
Quite possibly, the clouds off the horizon could be analogous to electrical configurations of the subject, and the thought processes, posing at the overall conjuncture of the composition. In the topic of “hope,” the message could very well be a substance applying the importance of self-awareness.
“Oy Vey” (a Yiddish phrase expressing dismay or exasperation). Well, it is often said we should avoid talking about politics; however, politics seems to be screaming at the reciprocal of this platform, and is quite detailed. The mood changes considerably in this composition and, moreover, toward its undertones that are held of voicelessness and in the context of politics that surround the topic. Instead, Shivel seems to articulate the protection and safeguarding of the nurturement of nature, embracing it as a mother would her child. All the while, the feminine subject is emphasized as still attempting to save her head. The chosen animals involved add to the visual dynamics of this piece. The work speaks its message quite transparently, as Shivel takes the viewer through the storm of its exquisite composition.
“Another Day Another Dollar.” Acrylic, paper, coffee filters, and styrofoam quite clearly deliver what this artwork speaks about, and three-dimensionally. Paradoxically, it is quite fun to look at, while maybe not the evidence that extracted from it likely was. More so, the experience hits the message on the button, becoming a question at hand: Is it all worth it?
“Victoria’s Lament.” This painting in acrylic on canvas is another work that Shivel uses as background to the theme of emotion from off the composition. Here, what an emotionless Victoria lacks in the expression of her face is the emotional journey spread of the sea in which she dwells. And as she grasps what past is entangled with roots, the message is exposed as a question: Is it the effort to reach what washed up on the shore, or is she letting go?
Shivel exposes the hypothetical nature of mythical reasoning to converse about choices, provoking thoughts about which can be claimed, and what came first and why. Too often in life there’s a threshold that forces one to give up one thing for something else. Perhaps this message is about nature’s natural procedural of balance.
“Cry” is an emotional painting of mixed media and acrylic on canvas that seems to be a transcendence from “Hope on the Horizon.” Undoubtedly beautiful, clearly the message portrayed here is about conservation: a very important one at that.
“Eye of the Storm” is acrylic and fabric on canvas that appears as a metaphorical sense of what weather does. It gives a sense of how time and place both create the environmental stress, and how it functions both as the action and effect. While a psychological fraction of its pressure costs is left to be freely interpreted, the transcendence of color is interestingly viable from the skies of “Oy Vey.” This three-dimensional concept brings its extraordinary essence of interpretative vision right in front of viewers to investigate for themselves.
“Garden Nymph Contemplating the Effects of Climate Change.” Shivel’s acrylic on canvas has a surrounding seven-piece set of 8-inch-by-8-inch small canvas picked by the theme of its subjects’ motivation. This painting emphasizes the prose of the composition while its muse blends into the delicate magic of care along its landscape. The conjunction of sea life and botany coheres with the abstract thought behind her, riveting color as a tool to emphasize the need for survival. The intensity of this work is honest and provokes emotion, as is seemingly needless for any visual input by its cause. Instead, this painting’s subject is from a perspective at the other side of it. Interestingly, no matter how colorful the composition is, it still leaves the viewer with a sense of emptiness: the irony entangled with the subject at hand.
“Cosmic Winds I & II” is acrylic on canvas, both pieces integrate pebbles into galaxies, expressing the stepping-stones toward the bigger picture. What a lovely path Shivel makes of it, and within the discrepancy that time decomposes, as color fills any negative space rhythmically imposed by the contrast of suggested wavelengths. Its mundane choice of compositional trajectory keeps the subject communicating along with the connectivity of it all. Very powerful.
Sharon Shivel is a New York-raised, local Floridian residing in Parkland who studied painting at the Boca Raton Museum Art School in the 1990s. Her works have been displayed around South Florida quite fluently, and they’re held in private collections between Canada and the U.S. For more information, visit www.sharonshevellart.com.