SEASIDE, CA— Carmel artist Elizabeth Wrightman has been painting from Irish literature for 12 years. But her interests are larger, and the horizons of her imagination lead even further. She is a Christian minister, yes, but also a cultural explorer, fascinated by the Celtic past of her ancestors.
Wrightman likes to spend a lot of time with a selected theme, be them white stags that according to the Celtic mythology appear as a sign that the other or unseen world is near, or colorful friendly dragons—on tapestry or as a mixed-media sculpture. It might be the colors, so thick that they become texture, and sharp borders between them, that make Wrightman’s works so ambitious and so mass-appealing at the same time.
And then there’s James Joyce and the world of his visionary novels—famously obscure Ulysses, but also Finnegans Wake, in which he was trying to capture the world of his beloved but mentally-troubled daughter Lucia. Scenes from Ulysses are Wrightman’s specialty, and just like the characters in this book are all metaphors, the artist presents them as almost biblical figures or gods. The novel’s main character, Leopold Bloom, was a great and loving cat observer. Another one of Wrightman’s artistic series imagines Joyce’s life—illustrations that could easily become his biography in pictures.
Monterey County Weekly staff writer Agata Popęda will inquire about cats, fairies and Wrightman’s ancestral past, and how the magnificent pagan tradition connects with her religious beliefs. There’s also the subject of how much of the Celtic culture had soaked into Irish Christianity, so deeply that it’s palpable still in 10th-century modernism. Wrightman’s acrylic paintings explore the tension between the domain of Christianity and the world of pre-Christian beliefs.
You can see Wrightman’s works in the Unitarian Universalist Church Gallery, 490 Aguajito Road, Monterey, on display from Feb. 3- Feb. 29.