Thoughts on Carolyn Pyfrom and Peter Van Dyck: Selected Paintings

Review by Elana Hagler, guest contributor

Caroly Pyfrom, Green Mirror, 2020,
35×27 inches, oil on linen

Peter Van Dyck, Bay Window Goggles, oil on canvas, 36×48 inches, 2018-2019

Deep in the heart of Alabama, a rare exhibition has taken root: an art show that is a genuine painter’s delight. Carolyn Pyfrom and Peter Van Dyck: Selected Paintings is being exhibited at the International Art Center Gallery at Troy University in Troy, Alabama from September 8 through December 18, 2022. Paintings in the show, twenty-five in all, include landscapes of both Pennsylvania and Alabama, interior scenes, still-lifes, figures, and many paintings that blur the lines between these genres.

Carolyn Pyfrom, Horsehead with Mirror, 2020, 44×3 inches, oil on linen

Peter Van Dyck, The Tiger the Cow and the Canine, 2020 33 x 38.5, inches, Oil on linen

Pyfrom and Van Dyck are a married couple who spend the academic years in their home in Philadelphia and the summers in Elba, Alabama, where Pyfrom grew up and where her family still resides. The paintings reflect the time spent in each of these two locations, each one seen afresh after the hiatus spent in the other. Pyfrom and Van Dyck met during their time studying at the Florence Academy in Italy. Their more classical approach to painting from that time has since evolved to one rooted in the surprising nature of the painterly response to deep observation of the visual world.

Peter Van Dyck, Elba from the Levee, Oil on Canvas

Peter Van Dyck, Chili’s and the Dissolving Prius, 2018 24 x 50 inches, Oil on linen

Peter Van Dyck, Alabama Studio Interior, oil on board, 36×48 inches, 2021-2022

Peter Van Dyck’s work consists of vast landscapes and interiors of his studio space. His influences are easily seen within his work, without the work ever becoming derivative. His landscapes have the grand, sweeping vistas (powerlines and all) of a Rackstraw Downs playing with perspective; the juxtaposition of carefully-observed textures and details all masterfully contained within a unified, living whole of an Antonio Lopez Garcia; and the pure delight of one found note of color singing against its neighbors of a Scott Noel. The very best among us painters take the work we admire and spin it into a breathing tapestry that includes our own predilections and understandings, and such is the painting of Van Dyck. These are not sanitized, prettified depictions of places. The cracked sidewalks and weathered paint of rowhouses in Manayunk speak to the deep green of the trees of Elba’s late summer. Lennart Anderson asserted that a painting is foremost a box of light and air, and these landscapes do not disappoint. Structures glimmer in the humid air of both locations. The atmosphere is so convincingly conjured through deep attention to color relationships that one can feel the rumble of the SEPTA trains whizzing by on a Philly afternoon and one can hear the whirring of the cicadas nestled in the growth of kudzu in Alabama’s rural deep south.

Carolyn Pyfrom, Self at 42, 2014, 24×16 inches, oil on linen glued to board

Carolyn Pyfrom, Cast and Skeleton, 2021, 40×30 inches, oil on linen[/caption]

Carolyn Pyfrom, Cast and Orange, 2020, 24×24 inches, oil on linen

Carolyn Pyfrom’s work is more pared down and intimate. Mirrors fracture interior spaces where we catch glimpses of people who hide from us even as they are revealed: paint becomes air and air becomes paint. Reality glitches and the familiar domestic merges with an unspoken archaic. Pyfrom’s paintings are a slow read, with forms slipping in and out of the flux of being, the atmosphere revealing objects and figures and swallowing them right back up. Paint is dragged along the rough surface of the canvas and scraped back with a palette knife. Traces of charcoal remain as pentimenti, embodying Pyfrom’s decision-making even as they enrich the surface. There is a dynamic tension between the sheer beauty of the worked and reworked surfaces, asserting the flatness of the picture plane, and the probing observation of the visual world, which draws us into a believable space containing the most tenderly depicted forms. The roughness and ruggedness of Pyfrom’s paint-handling brings the beauty of the forms depicted into stark relief, even as the ravages of life reveal the deepest beauty of the human spirit.

Both Pyfrom and Van Dyck weave sensual visual mythologies out of everyday encounters. Brick and chrome and wood and flesh are old friends encountered anew. The humble familiar is both embraced and transcended.