REVIEWS
Shana Nys Dambrot
Caron G. Rand: Dark and Bright
She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes. — Lord Byron
The work of Caron Rand embodies a spirited intersection between scientific inquiry and artistic expression. Drawing inspiration from contemporary astrophysics—particularly the concept of Dark Energy, and its mysterious but integral role in the cosmological phenomenology of an ever-expanding universe—the artist delves into the complexities of human perception and the subconscious. Her richly detailed, opulent, fractal, mandalic paintings hint at hidden forces that govern both the universe and the human psyche, transcending scientific exposition to enter the volatile realm of emotion and the mind.
Across pillars, leaves, clouds, ribbons, filigrees and flourishes, pareidolic apparitions, horned demigods, fecund botanicals, and shy sprites, Rand’s swirling currents flow with the invisible undertows that every soul must navigate. A Jungian influence can also be discerned in the recurring motif of mirroring and the exercise of intuitive, automatic drawing. The dark, boundless space against which Rand’s radiant patterns of white and gold shimmer serves as a metaphor for the internal firmament, where abundant stars can best be seen on the darkest nights.
Rand’s incorporation of text—specifically the word “love” in various languages—not only speaks to the universality of human experience, but also evokes the enigmatic nature of dreams and memories, where meaning can be both ambiguous and layered. Like Rorschach tests, but with no wrong answers, her paintings invite engagement with the work on a personal, individual level, in order to discover meanings that resonate with the viewer's own psyche.
For Rand, the act of creation itself constitutes an indispensable part of the work’s narrative power. Her practice of painting from “both sides,” by flipping the canvas at the halfway point and finishing it from the other direction, not only mirrors the duality of the brain's left-right hemispheres, but also the operations of physiological vision in which our eyes cast an upside down image on our retinas, camera obscura-like, before things get straightened out on the way to the brain. Positive and negative are qualities of neurological and pictorial space, and further emblematic of the myriad paradoxes, contradictions, and dualities that characterize modern consciousness.
As she works her way toward the gold-tipped centers of her billowing mandalas, Rand creates compositions that are, broadly speaking, symmetrical—but only insofar as can be accomplished by an entirely freehand process. In her attempts to recreate each half as a version of itself, she knows she is doomed to make “mistakes,” but embraces those variations as evidence of presence, gesture, query, and the condition of living in this world which is, fundamentally, chaos.
This echoes the artistic philosophy of Sol LeWitt, where slight variations create entirely new interpretations, and imperfections and so-called "mistakes" are not seen as flaws, but rather as elements that invite closer inspection, akin to the way the human experience is a tapestry woven from both triumphs and stumbles. Also like LeWitt, Rand offers multiple ways to install each piece—forcing the viewer to become a direct, physical participant in the work’s interpretation, to make choices for themselves. In this way, viewers are invited on an eternal journey of self-discovery, in a powerful allegorical self-portrait that also holds space for anyone confronting darkness with the light of the celestial self.
—Shana Nys Dambrot
Los Angeles, 2024
Peter Frank
For years, Caron G Rand has reached in her art for an understanding of the spiritual. Some of her artworks have striven to approximate a sense of disembodied transcendence; other works have meditated on the spiritual condition itself, manifesting a kind of meta-spirituality that reflects on the presence of spiritual insight and energy within our species – our civilizations, our societies, our nations, ourselves. In her latest paintings, Rand projects beyond the human and into the heavenly. But the heavens she renders are not the heavens of gods and ghosts, but of galaxies and voids, stars and singularities. But they are not the product of an astronomer; rather, as art, they guide us instinctively through an ether where the universe intermingles with our souls; an ether only art can describe.
Peter Frank is Associate editor for Visual Art Source and former Senior Curator at the Riverside (CA) Art Museum, He has served as Editor of THEmagazine Los Angeles and Visions Art Quarterly and as critic for the Huffington Post, Angeleno magazine, and the L.A. Weekly. Frank was born in 1950 in New York, where he wrote art criticism for The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News. He has written several books and numerous exhibition catalogues. Over his fifty-year career Frank has also organized dozens of theme, survey, and solo exhibitions for galleries and institutions in America and Europe.
Genie Davis
While many of the images may appear similar at first glance, dive deeper – they’re each unique.
Along with the color of darkness itself, she views dark energy as a kind of magnet, a musical story, a portent of language and hidden visuals, she says. “There are references to language in the sense that some of the gestural strokes may look [like] Kanji, Hebrew or Arabic and the forces that they bring to the work that the dark energizes. There is a rhythm that I am tapping into for each piece as if a musical score.”
She creates her visuals suggestively, so that the mind can explore what it sees. The gold lines she uses also refers to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, gold pigment and lacquer utilized to repair a broken pottery piece and make it even more beautiful and unique. This also reflects Rand’s idea of making “something beautiful out of betrayal, pain, illness, death, the unexpected crashing and splintering ourselves all over the floor to be picked up in some form and reconstructed by divine gold into something new… from powerless to powerful.”
Along with her interest in the concepts of reimagining, rebirth, and darkness as good vs. evil and the eternal, in creating these works Rand was also affected by her mother’s dementia and Alzheimer’s. She describes her own brain as also having a few black areas, due to oxygen depletion following a recovery from carbon monoxide and gas poisoning.
She hopes viewers will become involved in the perception and observation of her work as a meditative experience. “There is a loss in how technology has taken us away from nature and made us so dependent on it with our time and concentration. With my art, I am bringing the viewer back into a contemplative state outside of technology…The beauty of monochrome is timeless.”
Genie Davis is a multi-published novelist and journalist, and produced screen and television writer living in Los Angeles. Her novels range from suspense to romance, mystery, and literary fiction, with titles including mystery thriller Marathon, the noir Gun to the Head, and the romantic suspense of Between the Sheets and Animal Attraction.In film, her screen work also spans a variety of genres from supernatural thriller to romantic drama, family, teen, and comedy, has written on staff for ABC-TV's Port Charles; written, produced, and directed reality programming and wrote and co-produced the independent film, Losing Hope. As a journalist, you can see her work in the arts on her own diversionsLA.com
Julienne Johnson
In the rarest of moments within my experience as a curator, I have found myself privy to a consequential transformation seemingly taking place within the psyche of an artist; simultaneously, within that intimacy, I have watched that transformation reveal itself with even deeper clarity within the artist’s work. Such was my experience with Caron G Rand. Watching from a front-seat view, I observed how she profoundly painted her way through, “Dark Energy: Black & Gold”.
Julienne Johnson is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator. Johnson’s Curatorial invitations have included: The National Art Center Tokyo, Japan; Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Precious Design Institute, Surat Gujarat, India; and several co-juror invitations by IAA/USA and UNESCO Her artwork can be found in over 15 permanent museum collections in Armenia, China, Italy, Japan and Thailand. Julienne Johnson has received First Place painting awards, numerous certificates and two Grants from IAA/USA-with UNESCO.
Peter Frank
For years, Caron G Rand has reached in her art for an understanding of the spiritual. Some of her artworks have striven to approximate a sense of disembodied transcendence; other works have meditated on the spiritual condition itself, manifesting a kind of meta-spirituality that reflects on the presence of spiritual insight and energy within our species – our civilizations, our societies, our nations, ourselves. In her latest paintings, Rand projects beyond the human and into the heavenly. But the heavens she renders are not the heavens of gods and ghosts, but of galaxies and voids, stars and singularities. But they are not the product of an astronomer; rather, as art, they guide us instinctively through an ether where the universe intermingles with our souls; an ether only art can describe.
Peter Frank is Associate editor for Visual Art Source and former Senior Curator at the Riverside (CA) Art Museum, He has served as Editor of THEmagazine Los Angeles and Visions Art Quarterly and as critic for the Huffington Post, Angeleno magazine, and the L.A. Weekly. Frank was born in 1950 in New York, where he wrote art criticism for The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News. He has written several books and numerous exhibition catalogues. Over his fifty-year career Frank has also organized dozens of theme, survey, and solo exhibitions for galleries and institutions in America and Europe.Genie Davis
While many of the images may appear similar at first glance, dive deeper – they’re each unique.
Along with the color of darkness itself, she views dark energy as a kind of magnet, a musical story, a portent of language and hidden visuals, she says. “There are references to language in the sense that some of the gestural strokes may look [like] Kanji, Hebrew or Arabic and the forces that they bring to the work that the dark energizes. There is a rhythm that I am tapping into for each piece as if a musical score.”
She creates her visuals suggestively, so that the mind can explore what it sees. The gold lines she uses also refers to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, gold pigment and lacquer utilized to repair a broken pottery piece and make it even more beautiful and unique. This also reflects Rand’s idea of making “something beautiful out of betrayal, pain, illness, death, the unexpected crashing and splintering ourselves all over the floor to be picked up in some form and reconstructed by divine gold into something new… from powerless to powerful.”
Along with her interest in the concepts of reimagining, rebirth, and darkness as good vs. evil and the eternal, in creating these works Rand was also affected by her mother’s dementia and Alzheimer’s. She describes her own brain as also having a few black areas, due to oxygen depletion following a recovery from carbon monoxide and gas poisoning.
She hopes viewers will become involved in the perception and observation of her work as a meditative experience. “There is a loss in how technology has taken us away from nature and made us so dependent on it with our time and concentration. With my art, I am bringing the viewer back into a contemplative state outside of technology…The beauty of monochrome is timeless.”
Genie Davis is a multi-published novelist and journalist, and produced screen and television writer living in Los Angeles. Her novels range from suspense to romance, mystery, and literary fiction, with titles including mystery thriller Marathon, the noir Gun to the Head, and the romantic suspense of Between the Sheets and Animal Attraction.In film, her screen work also spans a variety of genres from supernatural thriller to romantic drama, family, teen, and comedy, has written on staff for ABC-TV's Port Charles; written, produced, and directed reality programming and wrote and co-produced the independent film, Losing Hope. As a journalist, you can see her work in the arts on her own diversionsLA.comJulienne Johnson
In the rarest of moments within my experience as a curator, I have found myself privy to a consequential transformation seemingly taking place within the psyche of an artist; simultaneously, within that intimacy, I have watched that transformation reveal itself with even deeper clarity within the artist’s work. Such was my experience with Caron G Rand. Watching from a front-seat view, I observed how she profoundly painted her way through, “Dark Energy: Black & Gold”.
Julienne Johnson is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator. Johnson’s Curatorial invitations have included: The National Art Center Tokyo, Japan; Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Precious Design Institute, Surat Gujarat, India; and several co-juror invitations by IAA/USA and UNESCO Her artwork can be found in over 15 permanent museum collections in Armenia, China, Italy, Japan and Thailand. Julienne Johnson has received First Place painting awards, numerous certificates and two Grants from IAA/USA-with UNESCO.
Caron G. Rand: Dark and Bright
She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes. — Lord Byron
The work of Caron Rand embodies a spirited intersection between scientific inquiry and artistic expression. Drawing inspiration from contemporary astrophysics—particularly the concept of Dark Energy, and its mysterious but integral role in the cosmological phenomenology of an ever-expanding universe—the artist delves into the complexities of human perception and the subconscious. Her richly detailed, opulent, fractal, mandalic paintings hint at hidden forces that govern both the universe and the human psyche, transcending scientific exposition to enter the volatile realm of emotion and the mind.
Across pillars, leaves, clouds, ribbons, filigrees and flourishes, pareidolic apparitions, horned demigods, fecund botanicals, and shy sprites, Rand’s swirling currents flow with the invisible undertows that every soul must navigate. A Jungian influence can also be discerned in the recurring motif of mirroring and the exercise of intuitive, automatic drawing. The dark, boundless space against which Rand’s radiant patterns of white and gold shimmer serves as a metaphor for the internal firmament, where abundant stars can best be seen on the darkest nights.
Rand’s incorporation of text—specifically the word “love” in various languages—not only speaks to the universality of human experience, but also evokes the enigmatic nature of dreams and memories, where meaning can be both ambiguous and layered. Like Rorschach tests, but with no wrong answers, her paintings invite engagement with the work on a personal, individual level, in order to discover meanings that resonate with the viewer's own psyche.
For Rand, the act of creation itself constitutes an indispensable part of the work’s narrative power. Her practice of painting from “both sides,” by flipping the canvas at the halfway point and finishing it from the other direction, not only mirrors the duality of the brain's left-right hemispheres, but also the operations of physiological vision in which our eyes cast an upside down image on our retinas, camera obscura-like, before things get straightened out on the way to the brain. Positive and negative are qualities of neurological and pictorial space, and further emblematic of the myriad paradoxes, contradictions, and dualities that characterize modern consciousness.
As she works her way toward the gold-tipped centers of her billowing mandalas, Rand creates compositions that are, broadly speaking, symmetrical—but only insofar as can be accomplished by an entirely freehand process. In her attempts to recreate each half as a version of itself, she knows she is doomed to make “mistakes,” but embraces those variations as evidence of presence, gesture, query, and the condition of living in this world which is, fundamentally, chaos.
This echoes the artistic philosophy of Sol LeWitt, where slight variations create entirely new interpretations, and imperfections and so-called "mistakes" are not seen as flaws, but rather as elements that invite closer inspection, akin to the way the human experience is a tapestry woven from both triumphs and stumbles. Also like LeWitt, Rand offers multiple ways to install each piece—forcing the viewer to become a direct, physical participant in the work’s interpretation, to make choices for themselves. In this way, viewers are invited on an eternal journey of self-discovery, in a powerful allegorical self-portrait that also holds space for anyone confronting darkness with the light of the celestial self.
—Shana Nys Dambrot
Los Angeles, 2024