Juxtaposition: Two Artists - Two Stories - Paintings by Hazel Belvo and Marcia Casey Cushmore

Pink Roses: Red and Green Peter Zelle Vase (DETAILS ON FRONT AND BACK COVERS)

There’s a dance that happens Between the painti�gs

of Hazel Belvo and Marcia Casey Cushmore in their collaborative project, Juxtaposition The paintings seem to be reaching out to each other, communicating through color, gesture, and shape. The exhibition consists of rectangular still life paintings of floral arrangements by Belvo, paired with square abstract paintings by Cushmore. Employing different techniques and styles, the paintings work together as a pair, with points of connection and divergence that make the viewer’s eye jump from one painting to another.

The couple had never created work together before, despite working side by side in their open studio in Golden Valley for years. During Covid, Belvo felt inspired by works like Odilon Redon’s Still Life with Anemones (c. 1900 — 1910) that the Minneapolis Institute of Art owns. She began a process of experimenting with observation, painting the same thing many times in order to watch her work evolve.

Sixty years ago, Belvo trained as a classical portrait painter, but had never painted still life except one or two as a student. She decided to draw on her collection of hand blown glass vases for the project, using 16 x 20 inch canvases, the standard size and shape that students studying portraiture choose.

Cushmore felt compelled to create her own work inspired from Belvo’s floral portraits. Rather than working off the still life, Cushmore’s work drew on Belvo’s paintings as a launching pad for transformation. (In more recent iterations of the project, Belvo has also painted from Cushmore’s paintings). Both artists use the same palette, with the exception that Cushmore could mix differently or have one different color. She started making surfaces a little thicker, and taking liberties with the vase and the bottom of the painting, which started to become very expressionistic. Her abstractions in a way are deconstructions of the more figurative work that I have done, Belvo said.

Belvo and Cushmore met in 1985 in Grand Marais, a small town where Belvo spent many years teaching at the Grand Marais Artist Colony. It’s near Grand Portage, where Belvo lived and had a studio with the late George Morrison, the Ojibwe landscape painter and sculptor with whom Belvo was married.

Outside of a gallery, Belvo noticed an enormous dog taking up the entire back of a car — the dog and the car were Cushmore’s. The two connected right away, but both were in the midst of full lives. Belvo was married to Morrison, and Cushmore was still in the midst of raising children. They moved in together eight years later.

Cushmore is a philosopher by training, worked as a filmmaker, studied at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (later re-named the Humphrey School of Public Affairs) at the University of Minnesota doing leadership training, and worked as a consultant. After she met Belvo, she turned toward art, going back to school to study media arts and fine arts in her mid 40s.

Their Juxtaposition project reveals a shared language and intimacy. In one pair of paintings, Belvo’s portrayal of white amaryllis pop from the indigo background. Cushmore’s response flattens the bouquet. The petal shapes become separated, with one of the shapes elongating to look as if it’s dripping, almost as if it is pointing downward toward Belvo’s painting below it. In another pairing, the primary colors in the glass vase in Belvo’s painting appear as larger blocks, searching and playful, in Cushmore’s.

Belvo uses a glazing technique, applying layers of paint over an underpainting, resulting in a rich luminous texture. Her paintings don’t have a lot of extraneous details — the bouquet shines through as the star. The details lie in the specificity of colors and brush strokes she uses to bring the flowers to life. Cushmore uses an impasto technique, using a palette knife to apply the paint onto the canvas. They are full of force and energy.

Where Belvo’s paintings create an expression of emotion from careful study of her subject, Cushmore’s responses improvise with spontaneity and dramatic gesture. Together, the paintings create a flow of conversation that relishes the joy of celebrating the push and pull of togetherness and difference.

Written by Sheila Regan, March 2023 Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts freelance journalist, columnist and critic. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column, the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and elsewhere.

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