McCann-ics
Margaret McCann at Three Graces, 105 Market St., Portsmouth, through Oct. 10

Whether it’s her thickly tangled hair and thoughts on exhibit at Three Graces in “Headworks,” her humor writing and poetry published on the Web, or her satiric column in The Wire, Margaret McCann is known for layering—thoughts, words, images—thick and fast.

“The fact that I’m from a family of 10 children has a lot to do with my interest in complication. Because there’s still some of my siblings that I don’t really know. And they’re mysterious to me. So I’m both close to them and distant. So I guess I’m sort of used to that idea of proximity and strangeness. I find it kind of interesting.”

In the “Headworks” series of self-portraits, her changing expressions are massively crowned with everything from watermelon, tropical fruit and bananas (“Frida on My Mind”) to personal thoughts, memories and fancies (“Call Me Marge”).

Among the elements that engage her in the painting process are the traditions of contemporary collagists, plus surrealism, cubism and the metaphysical paintings of di Chirico. She says people have suggested she leave more open space on her large-scale canvases, but the tension of so many elements in such a tight space works for her. Rather than appearing constrained, the architecture (bridges, iconic buildings), characters (from R. Crumb figures to The Simpsons’ Sideshow Bob) and objects (tiny beds, meteors, trains) appear to be bursting from the surface. She’s especially given to surrealist tendencies: she once attended a costume ball in Rome wearing a mannequin’s leg atop her head, which, she notes, went over well with the French guests.

“I would say I am a surrealist because I use a stream-of-consciousness process. That’s kind of the methodology of abstract expressionism, except they were not using images. That’s one of the things I love about Philip Guston, when he went back to figuration and was using this stream of consciousness methodology. I think his paintings are incredibly moving and funny. So I’ll start out with something. Like with “Redhead,” I started out with the bed at the top, and it was sort of an accident that I made the pillows into an eyelash. So OK, they’re eyeballs. Then I  added stuff. Some of that is little furniture I have around, little dollhouse furniture and I don’t know, I just came up with this sort of weird architectural infrastructure.” At the end came a cigarette. “I might start smoking. You never know,” she reflects.

A series of smaller works in oil on paper feature the artist in a black-and-white striped prison outfit starring in various scenarios drawn from influential painters like Guston.

“I like contradictions, so I think the idea of a large space and a small format, I find that appealing,” she says. Other recurring elements: “I like flatness. I like paint and decoration. That stuff I did when I was young, I loved abstract expressionism and I did much more expressionist paintings. (Now) I’m trying to get the color to be as strong as the imagery.”

McCann, originally from Cleveland, has exhibited on both coasts and taught painting at Boston University for 10 years. Emerging from graduate school in an era when painting was declared dead and it was a no-no to paint the female nude, she’s excited by the integrity and eclectic range of contemporary painters Dana Schutz, Beatriz Milhazes, Lucien Freud, Jules de Belincourt, and John Currin; the pop surrealism of graffiti artist Barry McGee or of Mark Ryden; and especially by female portraitists such as Hillary Harkness, Julie Heffernan, Anne Harris and Sandra Skolnik.

McCann’s own paintings invite a look, then they travel with you, much as the figures carry a plethora of narratives balanced atop their heads. To be moved by them, one must come with a willingness to be disturbed, to be slightly put off and to laugh.

Hair, she says, references beauty, power, convolution, complexity, the burden of thought, desire, memory and, she says, “I just like it. I think it’s kind of absurd.”


the familiar stranger
Vera Iliatova at Nahcotta, 110 Congress St., Portsmouth, through Oct. 9

Large, exhilarating, dream-like mountains, fields and seascapes overwhelm but never threaten the women and girls populating Vera Iliatova’s paintings.

Almost as if we’re watching them wander through their own dreams and thoughts, we observe as they, versions of the artist in skirts and summer dresses, underwear and streetwear, gossip with each other, explore summery rivers and darkened ice fields, and, sometimes, turn to question us.

“Because I’m using the female figure, sometimes people can tell it’s the same person. For me, it’s the same process of projection. One girl really is confident, one is shy. I’m trying to give them all different aspects of different personalities,” Iliatova says.

“I think for me that series of work is very autobiographical.”

The native of St. Petersberg, Russia, explains that the series developed out of the extreme loneliness and displacement she felt when, after living in metropolitan areas as a student, she moved alone to Dover to teach at the University of New Hampshire.

“These are all based on places where I’ve lived, and how I experienced those places,” she says. “When I moved here, I felt a tension because on the one hand it was so beautiful here but on the other hand, I was so alone, I didn’t know anyone.”

The style evolved after time spent teaching in Italy in 2003, at a school that sat atop a hill, creating a perspective where the landscape appeared very stacked. “When I came back here, I wanted the figures to be small, but not have the paintings be small. That kind of perspective was a great way of organizing the painting.”

Time spent in rural Skowhegan, Maine, and Alaska inspired her to continue to explore the concept. In Maine, Iliatova found herself spending many nights walking to her house in complete darkness, unlike anything she had experienced before, and discovering the animal-like nature of her fellow artists revealed as the summer wore on. Wolf-like dogs appear on the scene, roaming at dawn in “Before Sunrise.”

“Not in a negative way, like wolves devouring each other. It’s just at first people are very civilized. Then you live so closely, the human façade falls apart. I felt using an animal to represent certain interactions was the most direct way of explaining that.”

The process was less than intentional. It’s only looking back that she sees the connection.

“When you think of a dog turning into a wolf, when you think of those characteristics describing a person, it becomes metaphorical. I think when I was making those paintings I wasn’t thinking about it. That summer I was feeling so raw myself I was painting instinctually and when I look back at them they make more sense.”

Iliatova’s work was recently exhibited in the Portland Museum of Art Biennnial and at group shows at the Phoenix Gallery and Bowery Gallery in New York. These will probably be the last of the series. The loneliness has passed—she says she’s spent the summer in New York catching up with friends (“I gossiped a lot”) and feels she’s ready to move on. Her training is in printmaking as well as painting, and, as she’s teaching printmaking this semester at University of California at Davis, where she’s an assistant professor, she’ll be returning to that medium. In time, she hopes to be living again in New York and painting again on the Seacoast. “For me it’s a real treat to have a show here,” she says.