An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger

 

October 29, 2008 - February 15, 2009

 

 

Exhibition panels and wall texts


Exhibition Panel #1 - Artist Statement by Shauna Cook Clinger
 
The human body is at once revelator and revelation, a mediator of worlds, a marriage of heaven and earth. As one with the natural world, it is container of the sacred -- materialized spirit and spiritualized matter. In it, soul, heaven, and earth merge and become one landscape.
 
For me, all of Life is the manifestation of deeper spiritual realities. My passion remains using the human form as an expression of spirit -- from an interpretation of one specific person to a symbolic metaphor or personification of broader ideas, beliefs or experiences.
 
Every commissioned portrait I do, or have ever done, is a ritual and offering upon the altar of individuality; they remain celebrations of body and spirit.
 
In addition, I have longed to explore inwardly. As a starting place, I literally looked into the mirror and deeper into the language of my own body. I also scraped the heavens. In the process, a new visual language surfaced; I gave birth to deeper parts of myself and found a broader voice.
 
I believe we are incarnations of the Universal and are co-participants in It's self-wake-up-call. Some of us are yanked into metamorphosis by life's circumstances. Some dare to venture on their own. I believe we all, in our own way, are on a quest to find the divine Presence in our lives.
 
My art chronicles one woman's transformational terrain, documenting my search for truth, wisdom, rebirth and transcendence. My hope is that it speaks to both women and men as an invitation to enter the mysterious landscape of Other, Self and Divine encounter, inquiry and discovery.
 
 
 
Exhibition Panel # 2 ­ The Portraiture of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
"The face is the mirror of the mind, and the eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart."
 
- Saint Jerome c. 347-420 A.D.
 
Shauna Cook Clinger's paintings hold a significant place in the history of art in Utah and perpetuate a long standing tradition in Utah of artists engaging in the visual discourse of their times. Portrait painting has been part of Utah art history since the Mormon pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. As one of the state's most prolific and sought after portrait painters, Clinger's work holds a prominent place within this long standing visual tradition. During the 1980s alone, the artist completed over one hundred and fifty commissioned portraits. A major distinguishing factor of Clinger's work is not only her remarkable facility in rendering likeness but her sensitivity to subtle aspects of personality.
 
Clinger's work strives to give visual form to unseen aspects of a person's being that can only be intuited. This aspiration, combined with her use of rich color and brushwork imbued with both vitality and control, has resulted in a superb body of portraiture that Clinger refers to as "soul work." Clinger explains: "Every commissioned portrait I do, or have ever done, is a ritual and offering upon the altar of individuality. My portraits remain celebrations of body and spirit."
 
- Linda Jones Gibbs PhD
Art Historian, Mamaroneck, New York
Excerpts from the essay "Passages of Spirit, Passages of Paint",
An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Exhibition Panel #3 ­ Shauna Cook Clinger Exhibition Overview
 
Shauna Cook Clinger is an artist of transformation where body and spirit are united in a diptych of Shadow and Light. What was once hidden is now exposed. The portraits... become visual expressions of human metamorphosis. Eyes closed. Eyes wide open. What is art if not revelation?
 
- Terry Tempest Williams
Author and Naturalist
From the essay "Prayers for Rebirth",
An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
Shauna Cook Clinger is on a journey -- not an external excursion but an interior voyage that has taken her along the path of empowerment and self-discovery. Her quest for deepened spiritual awareness has taken form in a remarkable body of work that expands the meaning of self-portraiture and figurative art and invites us to explore the many dimensions of our layered lives.
In the late 1980s, Clinger's path took a significant turn when she experienced a deep-seated shift in sensibility that altered her artistic terrain. Publicly, she maintained her external focus with a rigorous schedule of commissioned portraiture. Privately, she began to direct her lens increasingly inward, painting highly personal, symbolic self- portraits. The result has been a remarkable group of paintings that are riveting in their degree of emotional honesty. Rather than focusing on physical appearance, Clinger uses the image of her own body to probe the complex coexistence of mind and spirit within the human form, the inseparability of the soul from the body. In many of her self portraits, Clinger depicts herself with her eyes closed, a symbol of her own search for inner vision or spiritual sight. "Let us try to see no longer with the eyes of the intellect alone," French philosopher Henri Bergson writes... "but with [the eyes of] the spirit."
These paintings visually document a highly personal examination of the artist's inner being, a process involving spiritual struggle, exploration, transformation, and ultimately rebirth.
 
- Linda Jones Gibbs Ph.D.
Art Historian, Mamaroneck, New York
Excerpts from the essay "Passages of Spirit, Passages of Paint,"
An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
Exhibition Panel #4 ­ Preliminary Works and Drawings
 
Artist Shauna Cook Clinger often begins her images for paintings on paper. Drawings give her freedom to play and experiment with different ideas. Drawing is also a vehicle to help her define, resolve and fine tune some of the considerations she will later need to make for a final work. Finding anatomical solutions in a preliminary drawing allows the final execution on canvas to remain bold and fresh, helping to eliminate overworking the painting surface.
 
 
 
 
Wall Text #1
 
Diptych: "That they which see not might see" John 9:39
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
 
This work's dual-paneled construction evokes religious altar painting, thereby reinforcing the artist's notion of art as a ritual offering.
 
"Dark seasons in our lives can act as periods of initiation. Often for us, as in nature, there is night before dawn; inquiring within can arouse insight and awakening.
Here is invocation and illumination, forgetting and remembrance. Light dissolves darkness allowing Strength to present herself; wading in the 'River of Life,' she stands upon her own resilience."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 2
 
Prayers: Imploring, Resistance, Crucifixion, Chaos and Surrender
Oil on linen
Springville Museum of Art, Permanent Collection, museum purchase
 
"Composed like an altarpiece, Prayers: Imploring, Resistance, Crucifixion, Chaos and Surrender embodies stages of a spiritual quest. The images make direct reference to the major Christian narrative of Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ's death on the cross and surrender to God's will, followed by His resurrection and rebirth. Clinger has written herself -- and indeed all women and men -- into the story of redemption and deliverance. Clinger writes, 'Prayers move metaphorically inside and through the Christian story. Giving birth to the new demands a "letting go" and a death of the old. Significant transitions often require surrender and undressing before the divine Presence, naked in Faith.'"
 
- Linda Jones Gibbs Ph.D.
Art historian, Mamaroneck, New York
Excerpts from the essay, "Passages of Spirit, Passages of Paint",
An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
"For Shauna Cook Clinger, art is alchemy and alchemy is transformation. In her painting Prayers, we witness the panels of Imploring, Resistance, Crucifixion, and Chaos and Surrender. We feel within ourselves through the power of these four gestures that awakening is possible only through the pain of self-awareness. The 'Dark Night of the Soul' carries us to a place of Empathy.
 
In each of these panels, gulls not doves, hover around the Self. They are scavengers, they are the oracle birds of Utah who heard the desperate saints' prayers and responded. A cloud of descending crickets were consumed in the fields by these wings of faith.
 
I believe Shauna Cook Clinger is an artist of faith. With her hands open in a gesture of repose, in the forth panel Surrender we see the illumination that comes with acceptance."
 
- Terry Tempest Williams
Author and Naturalist
From the essay "Prayers for Rebirth",
An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 3
 
Rebirth
Oil on linen
Utah Museum of Fine Arts permanent collection, purchased from the Phyllis Cannon Wattis Endowment for the Acquisition of Modern and Contemporary Art
 
"Rebirth is an emergence of light, life and freedom -- as if from a chrysalis -- after a period of gestation. One figure is close to the edge, as if pressing against the parameter of the stretched canvas. Inner vision is being born.
 
This piece was painted during a time I was redefining, reshaping and stretching beyond some of the psychological, artistic and spiritual limitations that I had internally placed upon myself. Though these are self-portraits, my desire is that this painting speaks beyond gender, and communicates universally of hope, transformation and renewal."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 4
 
Prayers for Rebirth
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
 
"Here is a trinity -- aspects of Woman in light, as Light. Even while emerging from her chrysalis, she dances."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text #5
 
Wisdom and Woman Receiving
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
"The gift of the artist is the gift of translation through Shadow and Light.
 
This is the exchange we see in Wisdom and Woman Receiving. A woman in a shroud of white is surrounded by doves on the shores of Great Salt Lake. She has her left hand covering her heart. Light is the essence of her being. Another woman veiled, standing across from her, has her hands open in a gesture of transference. Is this the birthplace of Inspiration where the very act of reciprocity, the giving and receiving, is the holy moment of Grace?"
 
- Terry Tempest Williams
Author and Naturalist
Excerpt from the essay "Prayers for Rebirth",
An Innermost Journey: The Art of Shauna Cook Clinger
 
"In Proverbs, Wisdom proclaims She was with the Creator in the beginning and that whoever finds Her, finds Life. Here is offering, communion and surrender. I believe, in our deepest Being, we are all embodiments of Wisdom."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text #6
 
Dog Day: Soul Retrieval
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
 
"Stripped of artifice and persona, the woman excavates the life-giving earth. Her slumbering soul, blue as a newborn, awaits; she is ready to be discovered, unearthed and awakened. To uncover is to bring to light. Dogs and coyotes are allies on this transformational terrain.
 
In Native American traditions, Coyote is Creator, transformer, magician and miracle worker. According to some Amerindian traditions, Coyote assisted in the creation of the human race by scratching open the hide of Mother Earth to release the first people from her womb."
 
~ Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 7
 
All Flesh is Grass
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
 
"Grass Woman is Earth personified -- an expression of Wholeness and Unity. Exterior and interior combine in a nighttime landscape of domesticity and wildness, a mysterious place where no boundaries exist to separate one thing from another.
 
In this painting, like the cats encircled round her, Grass Woman is nocturnal. As cats, large and small, she too sees clearly in the dark."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 8
 
Sky Woman
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
 
"Sky Woman gives voice to the oneness I feel when I surrender to the awe and wonder of the sky. I am Sky Woman, expressing my feeling of unity with Wind, Water, Clouds and Blue."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 9
 
The Opening
Oil on linen
On loan from the artist
 
"The Opening is a rebirth -- a woman emerging, rising into light. Forming her own birth canal, a woman pushes forth from her own womb. Ravens, other birds and wolves are her allies and guardians on her transformational journey. Out of iridescent blues, she recreates herself.
 
After finishing the painting, I learned the Egyptian Wolf God Up-Uat's title was 'Opener of the Way' and I became all the more convinced of the reality of Jung's 'collective unconscious'".
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text #10
 
Evening Prayer
Oil on canvas
On loan from the artist
 
"Evening Prayer was inspired by my great, great, great-grandmother Elizabeth Crompton Haydock (1800-1862) and her daughter Mary Haydock Luke (1835-1904). Both women emigrated from England to Utah and were surviving members of the Martin Handcart Company. The Company was stranded in heavy snow near Martin's Cove, Wyoming and later rescued in the winter of 1856.
 
Standing in solitary prayer, a woman draws Strength in communion with the night heavens."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text #11
 
Prayer Interrupted
Oil on canvas
On loan from the artist
 
"Prayer Interrupted was inspired by my great, great grandmother Mary Haydock Luke (1835-1904), who emigrated from England to Utah, and was a surviving member of the Martin Handcart Company. The Company was stranded in heavy snow near Martin's Cove, Wyoming and later rescued in the winter of 1856.
 
Mary was so discouraged at one point during the trek that she left the camp and buried herself in the snow. Wolves came very near and circled around her; she was rescued by a search party just in time.
 
This painting, though inspired by literal events, utilizes symbolic allegory to express my need to remain firmly stayed on the Path of my hearts desire, despite the emotions or circumstances that momentarily distract me."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger
 
 
 
Wall Text # 12
 
Voice of the Dove
Pastel on 100% cotton paper
Private Collection
 
"I began Voice of the Dove a few days after September 11, 2001, as a prayer for peace, both internally and externally."
 
- Shauna Cook Clinger

 

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