I dropped off eight paintings today at the lovely Art Deco Arcade building at 1033 South Boulevard in Oak Park today, and they will be up in the main lobby for the next couple of months. This location really is beautiful to take in, from the Prairie Style building designed by architect E.E. Roberts, to the interior features and art deco fixtures and glass. It is pretty busy in there, too, especially now that there is a coffee shop on the ground floor next to the lobby. This is a new addition since the last time I had artwork there in 2020. It is the third location of Kribi Coffee, a place I am happy to support due to their fair trade practices and high quality.
This is my first show this year, though the paintings are not all new. I put together a group of paintings ranging from 2017 – now, including two new paintings I recently finished for my friend, Scottish pianist Kate Durran, for her series of Chopin concerts happening now.
I don’t know a lot about Chopin, but he was a passionate person and composer, and his love for Poland was his motivation for so much of his work, especially these Mazurkas, or Mazureks in Polish, which is the word I prefer to use in their titles. He was by all accounts a melancholy man, but his passion in his music was fiery and dramatic. Mazureks were light and brief compositions (none are more than a couple of minutes), though he took them on more deeply, and I wanted to capture that with simplicity in my own compositions as I listened to all of them when I was drawing and painting.
He is credited with saying quite a few profound things about his art, but this is what stuck with me as I was painting these pieces, starting off with me trying to capture the high energy and every note I could, and then simplifying, then simplifying some more:
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” Frederic Chopin
These two new pieces aside, the exhibition at CrossFunction is a collection of mostly what I think of as late summer/early fall, and definitely a celebration of botanical work I’ve done in recent years.
You can go check out my artwork during business hours of both CrossFunction and Kribi Coffee, and there might be a reception in late September/early October – plans and date have not been finalized. Most paintings are for sale. Inquire by emailing me at jackielakely@mac.com.
