REGINA SCULLY JAPANESE LANDSCAPE: INNER JOURNEYS APRIL 7 – OCTOBER 8, 2017 The strong, calligraphic line, distorted perspectives, and hybridized forms employed by New Orleans painter Regina Scully have prompted critics and viewers to see parallels with Chinese and Japanese art. Although these formal resonances have long been noted, Scully had little direct exposure to works of Asian art until this past year when she routinely met with Lisa Rotondo-McCord, NOMA’s Curator of Asian Art, to study Japanese paintings from the Edo Period (1603-1868). In particular, Scully examined landscapes from the Nanga, or “literati tradition,” in NOMA’s collection and in a private collection in New Orleans. The Nanga tradition flourished in 18th- and 19th-century Japan and enjoyed steady patronage until World War II. Introduced from China, Nanga was based upon centuries-old Confucian ideals, in which learned and refined individuals cultivated their capacity to reveal the inner nature of the universe through the creation of music, poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Finding one of its fullest expressions in monochrome ink landscapes, Nanga painters did not create illusionistic views of specific locales, but rather structured, multi-perspectival scenes of idealized distant mountain retreats (often in China)—escapes from political and societal constraints. The strong visual connections between Scully’s work and that of the Nanga painters—the compressed spatial relationships and frequent use of black ink and fluid brushwork—belie more significant conceptual parallels. As Scully has written, “[My work and Nanga landscape are] a form of visual escape one can enter and explore in the mind.” Scully’s paintings explore how we understand and experience geographic and psychological space and grapple with new forms of space—virtual realities, outer space, and the ever-expanding boundaries of the mind. These artists, working centuries apart, with unquestionably distinct training, backgrounds, perspectives, and concerns, employ a similar visual language that results in the creation of animated, abstract landscapes. The paintings—those from Japan as well as Scully’s—with their meandering paths and unnatural juxtapositions of landmasses demand and encourage imagined and imaginary journeys, rather than being bound by the parameters of time and space. COVER: Regina Scully, American, b. 1975, Passage, 2012, Acrylic on canvas, Collection of the Artist LEFT: Regina Scully, American, b. 1975, Channels, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, Collection of Robert Heriard
Scully’s early work, such as the oilsketches created while a student at the Rhode Island School of Design [see next page], illustrate a shared sensibility with Asian art. Although she has never traveled to Asia nor studied Asian art or culture formally, Scully was, of course, not completely unaware of Asian aesthetics or traditions. Decorative Japanese plates hung on the wall of her childhood home, and after a high-school teacher commented on the “Asian quality” of her paintings, she went to the library to check out The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting— a Chinese woodblock-print book from the late 17th and early 18th centuries that served as a resource for both Chinese and Japanese artists. Other than coming to own a beautifully illustrated copy of the Dao de Jing, this was the extent of her formal exploration of Asian art and culture until this current project. As she notes, “I did not pursue this [study of Asian art]... in any direct further way or in any academic way...This exhibition involves a more direct approach to exploring the connections between my art and Japanese painters.” Over the course of the last year, Scully has viewed numerous Japanese paintings in NOMA’s collection, looking closely, sketching, taking pictures, and discussing the artists’ compositions, histories, and potential interpretations. During these visits, Scully also focused on the variety of types and styles of brushwork used to create the landscapes and flower and bird paintings, as well as their flattened, juxtaposed forms and multiple perspectives. She found strong
Regina Scully, American, b. 1975, Mindscape 2, detail, 2017, Acrylic on canvas Collection of the artist
Regina Scully, American, b. 1975, Providence Sketches, 1995, Oil on chipboard, Collection of the Artist
Regina Scully, American, b. 1975, Cosmographia, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, Gift of Tim L. Fields, Esq., 2016.64
Regina Scully, American, b. 1975, Origin of Dreams, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, Collection of the Artist
parallels with her own practice, despite her use of acrylic paints instead of monochrome ink, and canvas and board rather than paper or silk. The repetitive dotting in the Japanese landscapes and combinations of long and short brushstrokes of varying thicknesses and tonalities particularly resonated with Scully, as did the finger painting of Ike Taiga, as seen in Wild Bamboo. Scully has long employed similar brush techniques, including the manipulation of pigment with her fingers, as can be seen in the areas of dotting in Origin of Dreams. Returning to her studio, Scully processed, edited, and experimented with this information as she created new work. During this period she also participated in artist’s residencies in Florida and the Pacific Northwest, experiencing profound engagements with new forms of landscape and types of natural light, calling to mind the literati ideals of the past. She explored, in her words, “the natural intuitive connection in an open, experimental way, in an effort to open up a dialogue between my own mindscapes and Asian art.”
The dialogue continues between Japanese paintings and Scully’s works in this exhibition. Works from throughout her career are presented, as are a selection of the Japanese paintings she studied. Whether her prolonged exposure to Japanese painting will have a lasting impact on Scully’s work is impossible to know, as this is but one moment in her stylistic evolution. But it has informed, at least in part, her present body of work. As she considers the beauty of nature, its vastness, and its potential destruction, she examines new forms of physical and psychological space, pushing the boundaries of her practice to explore different environments and spaces within. Lisa Rotondo McCord, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs/Curator for Asian Art
Photography: Gary Gittelson
Regina Scully was born in 1975 in Norfolk, Virginia, and received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of New Orleans. She has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries in New Orleans and New York, and has participated in regional, national, and international group exhibitions. Her work is in the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Microsoft Art Collection, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Capital One Art Collection, as well as numerous private collections.