The process of painting often remains a mystery for good reason: it's the result that really matters. If a painting moves us, intrigues us, haunts us, brings us back to look again, then it has accomplished its task. We don't usually need to know how it was made.

Except, some paintings carry mystery so prominently that understanding their origin increases our appreciation of their unique status.

Corrine Ranson's most recent series of paintings, Cerf Volant, has a certain epic aspect, calling the viewer to wonder, "How?" What combination of technique and philosophy yields this complex simplicity?

It's an unusual beginning, but only a start. Ranson works and reworks these pieces back in her studio, often adding image fragments from a huge stock of pictures she has collected over the years: Mesopotamian sculpture, aerial photography, images of technology or a part of one might end up in the final composition.
Ranson is a deconstructionist. The original meaning of the collage element is irrelevant: "What these images represent doesn't mean much to me. I look at the forms, the colors, the textures" in selecting something to complete a painting.
In the Cerf Volant series, each image fragment functions as a floating element, untied from history or destiny. In some paintings, like Garry, the image reminds us of a kite. In Satelite, the three-dimensional element is an object lost in space. Another painting includes a picture that looks like a boat.
Kite, satellite, or boat, these are all images that simultaneously stand for the individual. Suspended between heaven and earth-our ideals and a much harder reality-the individual maintains a privileged position simply by projecting superiority through consciousness. Yet, this same image reflects the fragility of our attachment to the world, to each other, to the narrative continuity of our own lives.

Think of the satellite and you begin to realize the brilliance of Ranson's use of this motif: it's an exceptional symbol of refined, self-contained capability. Besides its technically sophisticated wiring, though, it's almost devoid of self-generating content. A satellite is a mediator. It receives and transmits signals. Day to day, many of us do the same.
"It is difficult to make a very simple painting," reflects Corinne Ranson. Indeed, it is. What makes her "simple" paintings work so well is the balance achieved, in each composition, between natural and mediated reality.

The background in each painting is the result of chance. Her technique of beginning each painting with a baptism by the river involves direct sensation, careless passion, intensity, and also an unusual distancing of the artist from her own creation. The river made those marks not Ranson. It's a random act of nature that kicked off this event-not intention, not planning.
The floating image offsets the random background and offers a precise point of entry for the viewer. Ranson's floating images represent cultured life, and the fractured nature of thought itself. Moody Hand (2000), for example, features a body fragment of an ancient sculpture. Each painting includes a representation of a representation. The image has a buoyant autonomy but it also signifies the cosmic loneliness of the disconnected modern self.

The Cerf Volant series represents a metaphysical achievement because it shows a capable painter pushing her work into a realm where meaning and method are one. An earlier piece, such as Hourglass (1992is a pleasing composition but it doesn't have the dynamism of Chinese Flower (2000) or Maya (2000).

Abstract painting is a great challenge for contemporary artists, even more as viewers are perfectly accustomed to accepting insularity as an artistic right. Making paintings that beckon us, jar us, satisfy us, and edify us at the same time, becomes ever more illusive.
Corinne Ranson's most recent series of paintings accomplishes this task.

- Eleanor Kennelly -

Eleanor Kennelly, an art critic based in Washington, D.C. has written for ARTnews, Art & Antiques, Art & Auction, and many other U.S. and European publications.