low country construct #1
Date2002
Mediumoil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas: 60 1/4 × 40 1/4 × 1 1/2 inches (153 × 102.2 × 3.8 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase.
Object number2004.14.1
Copyright© Elizabeth E. Cain.
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Label TextIn her studio out near the marshes of Savannah, Betsy Cain works on evolving bodies of work that influence one another in an environment of aesthetic dialogue and cross-pollination. The artist works in multiples, often creating pairs of related works, or series of three or more works that share a common palette or gestural vocabulary. Sometimes these works continue to function as diptychs or triptychs, but most often, each work develops into an independent entity.
In the early 1990s, Cain and her husband moved to a cottage backing up to the river on Wilmington Island, leaving downtown Savannah in order to live in proximity to the marsh and coastal waterways. The natural elements that compose the marsh—flowing grasses, viscous pluff mud, reflective water, shifting light—all find expression in Cain’s paintings and cut-outs. The artist describes her paintings as “a primordial soup” infiltrated by water, mud, and light. Her work also effectively distills less tangible aspects of the coastal environment, such as texture and density, light and humidity. Cain’s physical and spiritual connection to the marsh is in keeping with her artistic affinities; the marsh is, after all, a hazy, ever-changing border between land and sea, a magical place of transition and metamorphosis.
Most of Cain’s paintings manifest a kind of insistent energy that is innately physical. Her bold, sweeping strokes and unfettered swirls are tangible evidence of a body in motion, locating their spiritual heritage in mid-century action painting. Cain identifies a “liquidity or dance” in the gestures she records on canvas, and rarely works larger than her own reach, ensuring that her works relate to the scale of the human body itself. She uses her own body as a reference for “all things figurative—movement, gesture, feeling.” Cain seeks to create a dialogue between the internal and external that expresses physical energy and mental states.
