Worlds Collide: The Art of Mary Iverson
Mary Iverson paints bucolic, sweeping landscapes reminiscent of the late nine-teenth century that look as if were discovered in the dusty corners of an underrated thrift store. At first look, I assume the canvases are found objects, painted over and re-imagined as something quite different than the original painter intended.
This is only partially true. While Iverson does use photographs ripped from magazines for some of her pieces, the other half are her own oil paintings—carefully wrought, with a modern twist.
Unlike traditional landscape paintings, Iverson’s theatrical skies, mountain passes, pristine beaches, canyons and lakes are all overrun by an intricate snare of brightly hued shipping containers. The juxtaposition is jarring yet familiar, the collision of two disparate worlds, helplessly at odds. The drama in each scene is subtle, yet inherent, made more complex by the framework of themes Iverson draws upon: industry, accumulation, consumerism, infrastructure and the misappropriation of natural resources for personal gain.
Growing up near the port of Seattle, boats, cranes and the shipping industry were commonplace entities for Iverson—as ordinary as traffic, billboards and smog are to a Southern Californian. Iverson watched—fascinated, as the industry continued to grow, its pervasive influence the stimulus that would eventually shape her artwork, civic passions and burgeoning environmentalism. A current resident of Ballard (just north of downtown Seattle); Iverson divides her time between painting and teaching. She’s an Associate Professor at Skagit Valley College in Mount Vernon, where she teaches painting, drawing, art history, and design.
So all the lines are actually useful and honest, I don’t ever put in a line just so it looks good.”
While the inklings of Iverson’s new work were a long time stewing, she had to undergo several dramatic changes in style before arriving at her current location. “Where this series really started was when I was out painting Seattle’s industrial areas, and doing plein air realistic renderings.”
Iverson recalls. “As I focused more on that industry, I got closer and closer in and it became more abstract—looking at the shapes, colors and lines. I just let it dissolve into almost non-objective work. Although I can’t really say they’re non-objective because you can always see the container in it. But I went on this journey from total realism toward really, really abstract, and then I sort of hit a dead end and was like, how can this be satisfying again? That’s when I picked up the drawing and collage and stumbled upon my new series.”
The new series is a combination of what Iverson calls “magazine paintings” and her own lush oil paintings on canvas, all heavily influenced by the Hudson River School, aka luminism—and the work of Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and Frederic Edwin Church in particular. In many ways these men, dead since the early 1900s, taught Iverson everything she needed to know for her current body of work.
“For the first few in the series, I copied Bierstadt paintings, scratched in my perspective lines and put the containers in,” Iverson says. “After I’d done a few and learned the vocabulary of that luminist painting school, then I started doing my own large landscapes in that style.” Like her predecessors, Iverson’s landscapes are marked by hazy light effects, aerial perspective and the tranquility of the natural world. From Puget Sound to the Grand Canyon, Iverson travels to each place she paints, using magazine images snapped from exceptional vantage points to guide her. Like a modern day pioneer, Iverson arrives in the national park or protected area and sets up camp. She takes photographs, sketches, breathes the air, experiences the light, drinks it all in. Then she brings it all home and begins to paint.
“Part of what’s so satisfying about my process is that experience, and that experience makes a more successful painting. I’ve tried to do them from stealing other people’s photos, but it never turns out the same as if I actually go there and experience the place. I think that’s what attracted me to painters like Bierstadt and Moran and Church—the luminists – because they were traveling to those places too. These painters, their job was to go to the frontier, record it and bring it back to the masses—what the experience of this grand, scary, frightening, beautiful nature was. What do they call it? The sublime. So to be doing that myself is really, really satisfying. I really find a connection with their work and experiencing the natural world.”
As loyal as she is to both the style and exploratory spirit of the luminists; Iverson’s paintings differ in several dramatic ways, the first, being the omnipresent network of shipping containers that act as the primary symbol in her work.
“In my thinking, the containers represent populations, economies, the state of the world and our consumer culture,” Iverson explains. “Each container becomes a marker for the growth of consumerism. When you see them en masse, stored in a port or on a ship you actually see it visually, the impact of that is bigger than if you just see the numbers on paper… As a teacher, I show my students what I do, my art, and I talk about the container. My students—these are college freshman, say, ‘What do you mean, what’s a container?’ And I say, ‘Well, you know about trains and semis, right?’ They say, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, what do you think is in there? Where do you think your Nikes came from?’
And they just go, ‘Wow! You’re right!’ The general population hasn’t put that together, that these containers are full of stuff. We’re not thinking about our impact.”
It’s like high school! It’s like who’s the popular country? It used to be the U.S.—we were the football players and everybody else wanted to be like us, and now it’s China and Singapore.”
The strangeness of the shipping industry gets stranger as Iverson starts talking about the latest “ultra-huge, new Panamax containership” created by Danish mega-conglomerate, Maersk, the biggest shipping company in the world. Long story short, the Maersk Company has created a containership so big it’s like a city, a city that cannot fit through the Panama Canal. A containership so big, it has the potential to change the entire domain of imports and exports as we know it.
“The world of ships is getting bigger,” Iverson laments, “and in the meantime, our U.S. ports are going to be left behind because none of them can accommodate these ships. Only ports in Asia and Europe can. It all comes down to money. Corporations, when they want to import or export, have to decide okay, what’s the cheapest route?
And these new Maersk ships are saying, ‘Well we’re the cheapest route. But if you want to go a certain route like China to the east coast, then all of our west coast ports will miss out. It’s really complicated. The route versus… you know, where’s the price point going to end? Then the smaller ships get de-commissioned and go to Bangladesh where the poor, innocent victims break the ships down and risk their lives…
The gossip! It’s like high school! It’s like who’s the popular country? It used to be the U.S.—we were the football players and everybody else wanted to be like us, and now it’s China and Singapore. The U.S. is the largest importer, we don’t make as much as we consume. And China’s the biggest exporter… China, if you read trade statistics, they used to be the theater group, you know in high school, they used to be the nerds and now they’re going to be the football players.” She pauses for a moment, seemingly overwhelmed then says, “So look out, I’m going to start doing new work on the cheerleading squad and the football team of imports and exports.”
The second way Iverson’s work differs from luminist tradition has to do with the network of construction lines that are left behind, a subtle but poignant symbol grounded in pragmatism. In order for each container to rest properly in space, Iverson must find the horizon line and use vanishing points—the first things you learn about perspective.
After using the lines to get the sizes of each container just right, Iverson simply leaves them there.
‘Well, you know about trains and semis, right?’ They say, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, what do you think is in there? Where do you think your Nikes came from?’”
“It’s interesting, back when painters like Bierstadt were painting, they of course hid all their construction lines and sketch lines so we’d just get this unbroken illusion of space. You know that they sketched and struggled and scribbled but you never see that struggle. It’s sort of like they were magicians, and illusions just sprung out of their genius.
But when I started measuring to place these items, I thought, ‘Why hide the struggle, why not lay it bare?’ It becomes part of the interest of the image, leaving the construction lines. So all the lines are actually useful and honest, I don’t ever put in a line just so it looks good.”
In the end, I can’t help but think that Iverson’s paintings somehow transcend the scenic worlds of her luminist heroes. Given her intelligence and passion for the way people are living today, they even extend beyond the collision of industry and nature, consumerism and tranquility—in part triggering something very human in everyone who sees them. In short, Mary Iverson’s paintings speak to us, just a little, of ourselves.*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 21, which is sold out. Get our latest issue in print by subscribing to Hi-Fructose here.
Michael Reeder offers his largest collection of work yet in "The OtheRealm," his new show at Thinkspace Projects. Reeder toys with depth and color, finding an expanse of possibilities within repeated shapes and motifs. He accomplishes this with a blend of oils, acrylics, and spraypaint, shifting between styles, and at the gallery, given site-specific flourishes. The show runs through Aug. 24.
Oil painter Lindsay Pickett crafts distorted cityscapes that are at times taken from the artist’s dreams. His influences range from Dali and Bosch to sci-fi illustrators like Wayne Barlowe and Jim Burns. The key to crafting these pieces is not just subverting physics, Pickett says, but walking the tightrope of making them somehow convincing.
Painter Henrik Aa. Uldalen brings riveting new portraits to JD Malat Gallery with his new show, “Lethe.” The artist, who crafted the cover for Hi-Fructose Vol. 24, is known for his impasto, highly emotive paintings. “Lethe” opens December 13 and runs through January 11, 2020.
Painter Mu Pan’s massive scenes, often adorned with monstrous figures and epic battles, carry details that add both humor and intrigue to the works. In a recent show at Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City, titled "Bright Moon Shines on the River,” a set of recent works pushes this notion further. A feature on the artist’s work was featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 44.