Artist adds modern twist to Old Masters
A beautiful young Madonna balances the baby Jesus on her lap. Layer upon layer of transparent color and varnish coat the painting, lending it a gentle shine.
This painting, however, wasn’t created 800 years ago and it isn’t in a European museum. Daniel Flodin painted it a few months ago, and it’s currently part of a one-man exhibition at Springfield’s Keyes Gallery.
Flodin, who is from Springfield and now lives in Ozark, has exhibited at Keyes Gallery before; regular gallery-goers will be familiar with some of the works in the gallery’s back room.
“CaféInbetween,” painted in 1998, is there, as is Flodin’s variation on Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady With an Ermine.”
Many of Flodin’s works, such as the Madonna and the Leonardo works, have a definite Old Masters look, but the look is updated with a contemporary twist.
One of Flodin’s principal techniques is to divide his painted panels into geometric sections and in some cases even add additional objects such as wires and found objects, lending his paintings a third dimension.
The written word, often laid down in graffiti-like style, also figures heavily in Flodin’s paintings.
“Miss You on Saturday,” for instance, features a girl Smurf, surrounded with heavy impasto color with words scratched into the surface.
Fantasy plays a part in some of Flodin’s paintings as well. In “American Dream,” painted in 1995, human figures, furniture and automobiles float through a dreamlike world — sort of like a Hieronymus Bosch work brought up to date.
There are some abstracted works in the exhibit, such as paintings of windows in city buildings, but I think Flodin is at his best when he sticks to variations on the Old Masters. Flodin is adept at painting human faces, and he has improved in the years he’s been showing at Keyes Gallery.
Gallery director Billy Spicer says that Flodin is serious about his faith and comfortable with it and among the newer paintings in the show are several works featuring Jesus, both as a baby and as a grown man.
“Because of Him” features a man’s face — there’s no halo, no heavenly glow, no hand raised in a two-fingered gesture of blessing.
But the dark-eyed figure is still imbued with an otherworldly quality that makes the man’s identity easily recognizable.
Nearby, “King of Kings” is much more overtly a painting of Jesus, featuring a large face emerging out of a dark, paint-spattered background.
A trio of paintings, which Spicer said were Flodin’s most recent works in the show, hang immediately to the right of the gallery’s entrance.
Two feature the Madonna and Child — “Foundation” and “Fractured” — and the third, titled “Allure,” is the face of a young woman.
I found “Fractured” especially intriguing. It’s a large icon with a Byzantine-style Madonna holding her son, who is portrayed not as a loving baby, but as a man-child king, bestowing his blessing on his followers.
In this work more than any other, Flodin incorporates found objects and symbols of the modern world. Mary wears a lipstick holder for a crown and wires and a computer circuit board are incorporated into the work. Even in the realm of baby Jesus, it seems, the modern world intrudes.
By Camille Howell
www.news-leader.com
