Detroit, MI
Artists rarely work in just one style. Picasso certainly didn’t. Neither does Pauline Lodewyck Ender. A sly illustration from 1952, sketched when the artist was just 18, depicts a gaggle of women and children pushing one another at a street sale: Ender applies the ink and watercolor with sharp edges and stingy color. It was a rough scene. Two late canvases, painted sometime during the past two decades, proceed more tenderly, in a style that owes something to Impressionism and Pointillism, and a lot to jazz. In both pictures—one portrays the artist’s husband Paul, the other a musical trio—medium length brushstrokes, each of a color, accrete until they cohere to form the image. It’s a bit like magic, or math, or cellular structures. The effect is unfailingly lively, indicating the pulsing, feeling person and the rhythmic, noisy musicians. Music, itself an accumulation of individual notes and tones, especially suits this aesthetic style. Encore!
—Lori Waxman 11/29/15 11:32 AM