Perceiving Pousette-Dart’s art involves walking around the works, as when we view them in a gallery. In her recent “Centering” series of paintings, she says, “I wanted to concentrate on cycles—the transiting from one kind of light or substance, or state of being, to another. I wanted the paintings in the gallery space to function as a cycle of cycles, and I wanted each painting to reflect my vantage point and to absorb the viewer into it so they could move through the space of the painting. In other words, the shapes respond to the body of the observer.” She adds, “Everything is in motion; you always feel things are about to change; it’s the gaze that freezes it.”
By Barbara MacAdam