Two Chilmark artists, two perspectives

By: Brooks Robards, Martha's Vineyard Times, May 12, 2005

"By The Shore" by Gloria Burkin. "Beached" by Pierre Bourque.

Two powerful and very different artistic perspectives of the Island are on view this month in Chilmark.

Gloria Burkin's exhibit, “Changing Seasons,” offers sea and landscapes both snow-bound and in the fullness of summer at Sovereign Bank (formerly Compass Bank) through May 25. Pierre Bourque, a Canadian who summers in Chilmark, shows a seascape series at the Chilmark Library through May 31.

Ms. Burkin likes to roam the entire Island looking for sites to paint, although the current exhibit focuses on up-Island scenes. “I have recently become interested in how light forms beautiful shapes when it hits the rocks by the shore, or the side of a boat, or the colors of the Menemsha harbor,” she writes, “and how that same light changes from season to season.”

Despite being a late bloomer as a painter, Ms. Burkin has reached an impressive level of achievement. Expressionistic in feeling, her work vibrates with color and energy. The rocks in “By the Shore” teem with pinks and blues, as well as more conventionally dark shades. In “Up-Island,” towers of clouds glow with peach hues, and the artist builds up the vegetation in this landscape with both color and paint. Her often pastel-colored skies have an 18th century feel.

Waves turn into a bouquet of color in a seascape set at Lucy Vincent Beach, where the artist worked to recreate the sensation of walking into the water. “I was so happy I could catch that feeling,” Ms. Burkin says.

Meditations on sea and sky

Pierre Bourque has chosen 12 seascapes for his exhibit. To the casual observer, it may seem that he has simply repeated the same scene of blue-green sea, blue sky, and white clouds with a red buoy - all underpainted with black. The only apparent changes in content come when he moves a red buoy or line of islands, or shifts the horizon up or down.

Mr. Bourque's work is often described as impressionist in style, but such a simplistic assessment would disserve this accomplished painter. The minimalist repetition of subject in Mr. Bourque's exhibit forces the viewer to explore his mastery of technique and appreciate the subtleties of his meditations on sea and sky. If nothing seems to change, everything changes.

Based in Ottawa, Mr. Bourque started coming to the Vineyard with his parents in the 1970s. He studied at the Ottawa School of Art and has been a member of its board of directors since 1992.

All of Mr. Bourque's seascapes seem busy with brush strokes. They reveal no time of day or season. In “Towards Oak Bluffs,” black underpainting appears to give the seascape's clouds a grayish tint, making them look delicate and airy.

In “Beached,” the mast of a red boat tilts left, balanced by a bight between narrow slices of land. Mr. Bourque's use of paint is almost sculptural, built up in the sand portion of this painting so that it creates white highlights with green and red echoes, while the painted surface of the sky almost pours into the bight.

“Adrift” is the largest of the works and the only one that is framed. Here it is as if the painter has lost himself in the white of clouds, echoed in another, diagonally defined wedge of white between water's green and sky's blue. Muscular brushstrokes combine with a rendering of the fluid nature of things so that what the painter sees nearly disappears into abstraction.

Mr. Bourque's web site, pierrebourque.com, includes a much greater variety of his art. His work is shown at The Edgartown Gallery and galleries off-Island.

Brooks Robards has published 10 books, 3 of which are poetry, taught film for 20 years at Westfield State College, and frequently writes about film and art for The Times.