Abstraction review at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre
by Robe Roberson
Atop a million lit candles, Barnsdall Gallery Theatre was glorious as expected with decades of confidence under its belt; beautiful people of like minds that night, liquid gold in every glass, the four seasons balancing on the walls like clouds shifting forms the longer I looked…I was a kid again seeing nothing and everything. Though not her aim, I found what I needed--a bit of myself in all of them…as in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”
The blues were the featured pieces—“Light after Rain”, “Oceans of Life”, “LA Through House of Blues”. Azure in scope and a Zanzibar escape in imagination. The yellows competed equally well with every hue of Big Bear’s aspens present and accounted for. The red, featured in the August 2009 edition of SingularCity Magazine smoldered with emotion, a Rumi red, from which I found my own original delight in the piece “Transition” and how Clara captures the vulnerability in all of us. And the oranges exuded warmth of holding the hand of someone special.
“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.” Wilde’s continuation couldn’t be more true about Clara Berta’s body of work. Come celebrate some part of yourself in her next showing.
