Someone's Daughter, 2020
oil on linen
81 3/4 x 72 1/4 inches
Postman, 2020
oil on linen
18 3/4 x 16 1/4 inches
Left:
Untitled (LA 2/27/2020), 2020
colored pencil, wax crayon, and oil pastel on vellum
16 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches
Right:
Untitled (Verdugo 4/7/2020), 2020
colored pencil, wax crayon, and oil pastel on vellum
16 3/4 x 11 inches
Untitled (Verdugo 4/7/2020), 2020
colored pencil, wax crayon, and oil pastel on vellum
16 3/4 x 11 inches
Sneaks, 2020
oil on linen
20 x 17 inches
Four Dogs, 2020
oil on linen
82 x 74 inches
Killer Cut, 2020
oil on linen
50 x 48 inches
Doug's Van, 2020
oil on linen
Private Drive, 2020
oil on linen
77 1/2 x 105 inches
When I saw these paintings, I immediately went, in my mind, to Richard Diebenkorn, particularly the
Ocean Park series, the series for which he is most well known; of course, there are others paintings of his worth considering, especially as they investigate the relationship between structure and color, to be general and crude. But they are far from that, just as Rommel's paintings here are far from that even though they do seem to embrace mis-registration, misalignment, frayed edges, all phrases, like the paintings themselves that could easily be misconstrued as negatives but are rather quite amazing and deft in the way they approach coherence without actually doing so; in fact, they also work very well as metaphors for internal states of being, certainly interior space(s). In which case, I'm still inside my head viewing, reveling in layers and intersections whether they be linear or spatial yet not dimensional.
Revel and revery may be better words for me than "long leash" as the title of the show suggests. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I would be tied to. There are no concrete referents to attach save titling, in Rommel's instance. In fact, on that note, Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series is much less about locating facts in the landscape than it does a state of mind about the place he's in. From what I can gather from the press release about transitional life and working for Rommel, it seems fitting then, that her paintings may also reflect a state of mind, though they refer less to a place than they do people and objects in time, perhaps tethers all. Hence, long leash? Whatever the case, the language that supports these paintings are secondary to the immediate, viewing experience, which, eventually, led me home to pull my only Diebenkorn book from the shelf to want to know more, about the connections, and about why I still think about his work and also Julia Rommel's.
