DON EDDY: THE RESONANCE OF REALISM IN THE ART OF POST WAR AMERICA An art history monograph Internet publication by Virginia Anne Bonito, 1999. Published by ArtregisterPress.com. © Virginia Anne Bonito, 1999. All rights reserved.
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Chapter 4: Color (continued)

For the moment, I would like to turn our attention to Charles Bell, who in the early 70's featured toys and gum ball machines set against a dark background as the subject matter of his work. Chronology is not significant here in the context of who thought to use toys first. Eddy was, at the time, studying the phenomenon of complex reflections, a topic that Bell addressed in a profound manner at a considerably later date. More importantly, as they 'swapped' subject matter neither artist was redundant in its use. Given the Pop driven culture base in which these artists were working (discussed in Chapters II and III), toys were obvious candidates for thematic material and each artist exercised the subject in a manner unique to his vision. Bell, like Eddy was born in California, but made his way earlier in the 70's to New York City to develop his career as a studio artist. Though he is renowned for his later, stunning paintings of pinball machines and luminous still-life compositions featuring elaborately detailed marbles, his first subjects were toys - Raggedy Ann dolls, wooden pull toys and hollow seamed, metal wind up toys of circus monkeys, clowns, and airplanes. In contrast to the effusion of toys Eddy introduced into his paintings, Bell featured one toy, individually, or a few toys in limited combinations presented in an exploded, monumental scale. (Fig. 59) Bell enjoyed working with toys because their actual, diminutive size made them easy studio models. The toys provided the opportunity to study light and shadow projected from outside sources, particularly as these affect simple forms decorated in the strong colors of bright, artificial paint schemes. Bell was not interested in scrutinizing toys as banal and humble products in the rank and file of commercially available goods. In a surprising counter-Pop gesture, he wished, rather, to draw attention to the oft missed uncomplicated, fantastical detailing and special character given the toys by their designers as a means of sparking the response of playful delight. (He might have been pointed in the direction of scrutiny of such lighthearted subject matter by such Pop artists as Niki de Saint-Phalle, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg).

Fig. 59 Charles Bell, Clown and Monkey, 1972 oil on canvas, 50 x 62 in., private collection. Courtesy Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York Fig. 60 Charles Bell, Valentine, 1984 oil on board, c. 10 x 7 in., private collection. Courtesy Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

Like Eddy, intentions of this sort by Bell for his subject matter supersede the common perception of "Photorealism" as the identifier of a casual or clinical approach to realism whose only edge is its tour de force sharp focus technique. In fact, it was precisely Bell's appreciation of the character (i.e., persona) of the toys that subsequently provided him the opportunity to develop a scenario that, in fact, could be classified as a response to Surrealism. It is well known that in the later 70's the eminent Surrealist master, Salvator Dali, took an interest in Bell's work and befriended the younger artist. The impact of Bell's association with Dali is evident, especially in his toy paintings of the 80's. In these paintings, the toys have lost their naïve playful character. Though they retain their outer casing, they have been sapped of their vigor. Some, reduced to De Chirico-like automatons, stand in the roles and occupations of adulthood - in a manner of speaking the toys, as surrogates of humanity, have lost their childhood and the freedom of expression that fantasy allows. In Valentine, 1984, for example, the hollow, seamed shells of a man and woman are "caught" in a dance step from which every ounce of lighthearted movement and magical spark have been drained, as if to affirm that romance is soon replaced by burden and compromise. (Fig. 60) In Lullaby, an 80's redaction of a clown toy favored by Bell in the 70's, the artist zoomed-in on the clown's face in cinematic scale. (Fig. 61)

Fig. 61 Charles Bell, Lullaby, 1983, oil on canvas, 64 1/4 x 78 1/4 in. collection Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa OK. Courtesy Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

The seam that runs down the center of the face is turned into a convenient dividing line between "good and evil;" the placid expression on its proper right side shifts to that of the trickster on the proper left or sinister side. (NB: proper here means not as we, from an opposite position, look at the object but refers to the actual side of the object.) In another painting entitled The Judgement of Paris, the artist brilliantly mocks a vacuous society's reduction of the moral consequence of popular ancient myths into popular, trivial playthings. Venus, Juno, Minerva, Mercury and Paris are re-cast as 20th century stereotypes of beauty contest-type glamour. Inanely outfitted, Miss America, Marilyn Monroe, Barbee, GI Joe and Ken dolls (the 20th century surrogates of the ancient gods) appear like actors in a parody on a circus side show stage equipped with an artificial landscape backdrop. In Side Show, 1984, two wind-up toys, a Donkey playing cymbals and a Tropical Bird beating a drum, cast in an eerie light, replace humans as performers at the corner of the seedy stage that sports the words "Real" and "Come See." (Fig 62) The cautionary message of these paintings, relayed through a sense of lurking malevolence or the outright absurdity of trivial behavior, is not dissimilar to that of the early 20th century Dada and Surrealist avant garde.

Fig. 62 Charles Bell, Side Show, 1984, oil on canvas, 72 x 60" Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ. Courtesy Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

Dali's association with Bell is well known. However, the Surrealist master's interest in Don Eddy is not. There were several casual meetings between Eddy and Dali, and a special dinner given by Dali in which he outwardly expressed admiration for Eddy's work. The interest shown by Dali in the 'Photorealists' clearly extended beyond a shared appreciation of and affinity for the bravura of 'hyperreal' or 'meticulous' technique. It signals a current in the work of the new Realists that links it to main line modernism in a substantive way. In fact, if we retrace the history of modernist and contemporary art movements, we will find that, on some level, the formative tenets of Dada and Surrealism provided the impetus for much that followed. Particularly potent in the ideology - in terms of these future developments - were concepts such as: the humorous and sometimes sarcastic attack on bourgeois values; the repudiation of conventional meaning by the irrational; the investigation of accident and chance in found objects; the development of collage and mixed media; the invention of new techniques; the exploration of psychic automatism - that is, the suppression of conscious control in favor of unfettered expressive gesture; the exploration of pure geometry or pure color following on the heels of Cubism and Fauvism that set off a chain reaction of responses in its own right. The succession of the most notable, provocative art movements that followed on the heels of Dada and Surrealism - from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism, Hard Edge, Color Field, Op Art, Assemblage, and Pop Art - stands witness to the impact of these early avant garde movements upon 20th century modernism. The point here is to recognize that the later 20th century Realists responded in kind. The best work of these artists holds within it commentaries, rejoinders, new solutions and constructs equally as fresh, valid and interesting as the work of their abstractionist counterparts. A broad view of the history of style will, in fact, reveal that the many varied branches not only of abstraction but of figural art as well have, each in their own right, branded the cultural landscape of the post war 20th century with its extraordinarily distinctive character. I would like to take these observations one step further through the example of Eddy's paintings. We have, over the course of our discussion of Eddy's oeuvre, signaled the artist's constant, thoughtful analysis of the conventional and avant garde mechanisms of art, and his special interest in the experiential and perceptual domain. The articulation of these concepts through the "Color" series paintings represents perhaps the most original personal contribution by the artist to the expansion of the expressive potential of the painter's canvas. There has been a tendency, however, to interpret the innovative scenario of the 'floating toys' as Surrealist inspired, as a revisionist or neo-Surrealism of sorts. In this regard it is important to set the record straight and to note that Eddy's suspension of 'floating toys' was not motivated by the disturbing aspects of the psychological domain that were a reference point of early 20th century Surrealism. Nor is it the product of free association and abandon. Rather, the 'floating toys' scenario (for want of a better phrase) was fabricated as one of the means Eddy developed to express the condition of multiple, simultaneously active mental processes. The concept is grounded, not in the realm of abandonment of conscious control, but in metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of reality, encompassing the experiential realm and ontology. It represents a new pictorial situation that is the outcome of a logic bound investigation of the nature of experience, of existence, of conscious being and of the various possible forms by which this could be translated into visual imagery. Ultimately, on the most basic level the 'floating toys' scenario is meant to add pleasurable visual interest to the composition while at the same time 'pumping up the volume' on Eddy's challenge to the viewer to be cognizant of mental function and to keep perception keen.

Fig. 58 Don Eddy, C VII E (Dreamreader), 1984, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in., private collection (detail.)

Eddy's 'floating toys' scenario does not, then, depend upon what might seem on the surface to be a novel reformulation of the Surrealist dream-state. Titles like 'Dreamreader' or 'Daydreamer' do not reference Surrealism either. Nonetheless, Eddy and his most talented colleagues do owe a fundamental debt to Surrealism and Dada demonstrated by their profound investigation of the nature of experience and the consequent development of a visual language by which to express it. To our litany of Surrealist and Dada ideas that gave impetus to 20th century modernism, we must also grant to these two movements the distinction of having provided the watershed where the dividing line between art and life collapsed. The early 20th century fascination with importing, or 'collaging' pieces of reality into art constructs opened the door to Assemblage, Pop Art, Happenings and Environments. In this context, the presence of another long-lived celebrity of the early 20th century, the master of Dada, Marcel Duchamp proved a constant instigation to younger artists to pose compelling questions and situations. "Must a work of art be made by hand? Is a work of art not first a mental event?" "Is art a surrogate of life? Is art life? Or, vice versa, is life art?" Such notions inform the work of many artists especially of the later 50's through the 70's, some of whom went so far as to incorporate mirrors and the condition of actual reflection in their work. One can cite such thought provoking examples as Michelangelo Pistoletto's early 60's cutouts of life size figures collaged onto polished, mirror-like metal surfaces. Pistoletto's collage experiments were notable for a number of reasons. The mirrored surfaces forced the viewer to be a component of the work as well as offering the possibility of different settings for the activities depicted by the cutout, collaged figures and reflected viewers. Depending upon where the work was hung, for example in a room in a home versus in a lobby of an office building, the mood or environment of the work could change. Pistoletto, and his like-minded peers, led the way for younger masters like Eddy to reevaluate the relationship between environment and art; the environment within a work of art; and the impact of the fabricated environment of a work of art upon a viewer's relationship to his actual environment. Such concerns are fundamental to the essential artistic ideological framework developed by Eddy and some of his own talented Realist associates. As a case in point, Pistoletto's intention to offer the possibility of changing the environment around his subjects through his process of appliquéing them on mirrored surfaces holds an uncanny resemblance to Eddy's own instinct to offer various backdrops for the 'floating toys' scenario in the later "C" series sets.

Fig. 63 Lucas Samaras, Mirrored Room, 1966 mirrors on wooden frame, 8 x 8 x 10' Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Gift of Seymour H. Knox, 1966. Fig. 64 Don Eddy, Dreamreader's Cabinet, 1985 acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 in. private collection.

Like Eddy, Bell pushed boundaries through such devices as the hyper-articulation of reflection, transparency and focus. However, in contrast to Eddy, Estes, and other of his colleagues, Bell's source material was not the polished chrome and reflective glass of the later 20th century urban environment. It was 'images seen through a lens' that Bell codified as the official visual reality of this century, whether of the common sort or of the exceptional sort like Bernice Abbott's renowned documentation of scientific phenomena. (Footnote 58) Other noted Realists as well - Chuck Close, John Salt, Richard Estes, Joseph Raffael, Carolyn Brady, and John Baeder, among them (some of whom were even trained by the great early 20th century Modernists) embarked on diverse paths of exploration in the common goal of transforming traditional formats through contemporary reference points. It is to their credit that over the course of several decades, they have created a body of work that at one and the same time holds the line for future generations on time-honored methodologies in the making of art, yet offers timely responses to the multifold aspects of contemporary society, life, environment and technology. Through their efforts the vibration and visual aspect of our society bound together has been captured for future generations, recorded not only through the camera but through the eye, mind and hand of the artist. The years 1985-88 marked a personal watershed for Eddy, as he made ready to open an entirely new avenue of exploration with his paintings. He began to relax the strict rigor of the "C" series sets. With the C VIII set, he dropped the 'black void' B paintings. The slow substitution of natural versus manmade objects on the mirrored shelf now opened the way to a grand dialogue with nature and the supernatural. He produced only two additional sets before abandoning the format of the sets altogether. Telling in this regard is the fact that these last sets do not carry the normal titling using the letter C, Roman numbers and a subtitle. Rather, the subtitles move into the spotlight adding a salient verbal dimension to the already rich subject matter. An open, expansive quality enters the work, the signal that the artist's long, sagacious residency in the study of the operations of making art was nearing an end. The many aspects of this multifold, magical process - style, message, development of a pictorial vocabulary, compositional structure, technique, innovation and the like - that had been subjected to scrutiny by the artist were now comfortably assimilated into a confident personal working mastery of his medium and message.

Fig. 65 Don Eddy, A Night in the Tropics, 1985 acrylic on canvas, 34 x 48 in., private collection.

Along with the completion of the C VIII set, 1985 saw the initiation of numerous experimental scenarios based on "C" series concepts. The skyscapes, cityscapes and architectural views of these works anticipate Eddy's burgeoning interest in the natural world and point in the direction that would soon become the primary focus of the new work. The paintings are weighted towards revealing more natural or 'actual' sensory environment. For example, in A Night in the Tropics , 1985, moonlight breaks through a stormy night sky; a balmy atmosphere now hosts the floating toys. (Fig. 65) The array is less dense and the 'after-images' of the shelf construct and mirroring seem to be carried along by the warm breeze that rustles the tops of the trees. The most dynamic painting of 1985 is Altar Boy Daydreamer, 1985, the third and last painting of the "C VIII" set. (Fig. 66) In it, the 'floating toys' scenario intercepts the upward surge of a dramatic perspectival view into the vaults of the Dome of the Hotel des Invalides, Paris. A new challenge is offered to the viewer in the presentation, simultaneously, of the dramatic upward thrust of the interior perspective (from lower left to upper right), reverberated in the diagonal arrangement of the toys along a counter diagonal (from lower right to upper left), while having the sense of looking down on the toys themselves. The baroque interior of the spectacular French monument had inspired an effusive mood in Eddy, and he found an opportunity to flaunt his command of tricky perspective and foreshortening. The stunning quadratura trompe l'oeil in the Invalides vaults, where solid mass gives way to heavenly visions, also offered an opportune juxtaposition for the expansive skies and sea of our familiar friends, the Hawaii photographs, in order to explore concepts of 'containering' or framing of vistas. Altar Boy Daydreamer represents more than just a game of viewing angles and boundary constraints. It is as if the vaults, toys and vistas craved being wrenched free from the strict rules and formats Eddy had thus far imposed in the making of his images. Other experiments of this sort were in the works as well, bringing with them more accelerated, overarching changes in the imagery and compositional formats of the paintings that followed.

Fig. 66 Don Eddy, Altar Boy Daydreamer, 1985 acrylic on canvas, 55 x 44 in. private collection.

Two last groups of paintings still fit the signification of set as we have identified it thus far - i.e., that the exact same objects appear in all the paintings belonging to the set and that the overlay of excerpted floating items respects the identical objects and placement on the canvas as they appear in the cabinet painting that initiates the set. For the reader's convenience, the paintings belonging to these last sets are identified as follows: Dreamreader's Cabinet, Daydreamer in Bellagio, Autumn Light and Jerome's Dilemma; the last set includes Dreamreader's Cabinet II, Matthew's Dilemma, Persistant Memories I and Arcadian Delusion. They are full of lively experiments of this sort represented by Altarboy Daydreamer.

Fig. 64 Don Eddy, Dreamreader's Cabinet, 1985 acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 in., private collection.

In Dreamreader's Cabinet, 1985, Eddy began to substitute fruit and vegetables, gum balls and jelly beans for many of the toys; a sparser arrangement afforded the jars of paint prominence as symbols of color. (Fig. 64) In a sensitive essay for a 1986 exhibition brochure, Alvin Martin reminds us that Dreamreader is Sarah, and that the fruit and vegetables that mingle with the toys also demonstrate Eddy's tender parental fascination with the passage of his child into adolescence. (Footnote 59) In the second and third paintings of the set, the mirrored glass shelf is transformed into reflections that play, respectively, on the still surface of a lily pond, and on the energized surface of the water running along the tree, brush andshrub lined bank. (Figs. 67 & 68)

Fig. 67 Don Eddy, Daydreamer in Bellagio, 1985, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 in., private collection Fig. 68 Don Eddy, Autumn Light, 1986, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 in., private collection.

The studio flood lights, likewise, are transformed into nature's displays of sunlight, caught streaming through foliage or spotlighting rippling water. The scene and overlay of floating items now seem flawlessly interwoven through a new approach to light and palette. Ambient light casts a luminous silvery aspect over the formal Italian lily pond of Daydreamer in Bellaggio and its procession of floating items that appear to maneuver their way through the lily pods as they glide along into the distance. An autumnal glow warms the Neoclassical revival entry gate to the old San Francisco world's fair grounds, to its tree and shrub lined pond, and the parade of toys, candy and fruit that compliment the natural setting and compositional structure of Autumn Light. Tonal light permeates the stratigraphy of the paintings, embracing all the diverse elements no matter from what photographic source these might have been excerpted. Even the 'floating toys,' that have referenced the studio lights wherever they appeared thus far, admit the new system of 'natural' illumination.

Fig. 69 Don Eddy, Jerome's Dilemma, 1986 acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48 in., collection of the artist.

For Jerome's Dilemma, 1986, Eddy appropriated the image of the Saint from a painting by Simon Vouet, tipping his hat once again to art history and tradition, as he had when he quoted the Raphael Madonna. (Fig. 69) In this buoyant moment in 1985 - 86, the traditional subject matter of art history now also held the key to unlock a final stronghold belonging to the realm of perception as yet untapped in Eddy's work - that of vision and transcendence and, along with it, the great liberty granted by pictorial fiction to convey miracles, supernatural events, and acts of faith. The aged Saint, a theologian and Father of the Church, suspends his pen as he is overtaken by inspired thought given form in the aspect of a gracious angel. The Saint, whose introspective gaze is cast in the direction of the angel, seems rather to listen than to look. In the strangest, yet wonderfully successful dance of balances and tensions arrived at by Eddy in his complex paintings, the suspended animation and quietude of the supernatural event and that of the floating items - each in its own right a remarkable fiction - find themselves mirrored.

In Altar Boy Daydreamer II, 1987, the penultimate painting of the sets, we sense that we are at a threshold. (Fig. 70) The supernatural arena of the Invalides vaults and Jerome's Dilemma fuse with the energy of Altar Boy Daydreamer. The principal image of an "Assumption of the Virgin," appropriated from Poussin, represents the moment when the Virgin's body is miraculously swept aloft by a glory of little angels and carried through a sky of high flying clouds towards heaven. The ebullient frolicking of the baby angels sets a tone of levity for the floating items, which seem to gladly join in. The cloud swept skies in the photographs of the Hawaiian beach and of the Paris bridges strike a chord; as the photographs themselves waft through the air, even seascape and cityscape rally in the ascent. Eddy ever so appropriately described his mood in that moment, "Everything is floating, everything is set free."

Fig. 70 Don Eddy, Altar Boy Daydreamer II, 1987 acrylic on canvas, 56 x 40 in. Flint Institute of Art, Flint, MI. Museum Purchase in Memory of Mary Mallory Davis.

The cruciform shape of Arcadian Delusion, 1987, the final painting of the sets, truly marks the juncture of the next important crossroad for Eddy. (Fig. 71) A cabinet painting and a landscape painting intersect, with the result that nature is given priority over the artificial world of the cabinet construct. Yet the vitality and delight lent by the lacy overlay of floating items is an open endorsement of the valued role of artifice, fantasy, and invention as components of the artistic process.

Fig. 71 Don Eddy, Arcadian Delusion, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48in., private collection.

The horizontal edges or points of intersection of the landscape and the cabinet construct applaud this fact. They are the points along which a most fascinating colloquy takes place. For example, the patch of blue sky in a photograph of a landscape positioned on the upper 'edge' of the intersection obliterates any sense that the edge exists. The floating vegetables of the construct, products of Mother Nature's bounty and craft, spill into the sunlit foliage of the landscape. Architectonic and natural space collide. Just enough vertical insistence is given to the floating toys and candy to convince of the presence of the cabinet painting without disturbing the identity of the landscape through too complete an amalgamation of the two contrasting 'worlds'. Palette and light perform their own magical balancing act.

In the kaleidoscopic moment, kicked off by Altarboy Daydreamer nature and the domain of the spirit filtered into the work. A notable shift occurred in the paintings that follow Arcadian Delusion. New compositions still generate exploratory variants, but they now begin to be released from the structural rigor that bound the paintings as sets. Concepts, freed from sequential evolution, now more freely drive image making. Eddy continued to produce cabinet paintings for a while longer to keep his bearings as he set course for new, ever broadening horizons, and also to keep tabs on his changing entourage of characters - as the toys were slowly retired, edibles began to join the rank and file. Over the course of the next two years, and motivated by persistent and longstanding considerations concerning painting as a synthetic process, Eddy concentrated on developing new compositional devices to express this condition. He modified the format and function of his favored 'floating objects' scenario, or dispensed with it altogether. He began to study the ramifications of intense palette and sharp shifts between foreground and vista granted by superimposing vignette-like cutouts of tropical vegetation on expansive seascapes. A new line of battle was drawn as nature was admitted into the paintings as the primary subject matter without sacrificing the message that the process of making art is synthetic.

Fig. 72 Don Eddy, Persistent Memories II, 1987 acrylic on canvas, 50 x 48 in., private collection.

One of the first offerings of this new phase of activity was Persistent Memories II, 1987, a variant of the cruciform Arcadian Delusion but delivered through a vibrant palette. (Fig. 72) As usual in Eddy's work, the title alludes to more than one situation. It surely references the by now unabashed, persistent presence of the cabinet construct and its associate 'floating objects' scenario; it also recalls Eddy's love of the sandy white beaches and clear water of his subtropical haunts - Hawaii and, his more recent getaway, the Caribbean. A new pictorial element in the form of a hibiscus branch extends its reach across the inviting turquoise waters of a sparkling beachscape while, simultaneously, mingling with the familiar floating objects. Under close scrutiny we discern that the branch is actually a third overlay, excerpted from a different photographic source than that of either the beach scene or the cabinet setup. Embedded in the concept of the layered structure of the painting, a suggestive reference to collage is to be found. However, we should not loose sight of its primary function - to underscore the intended sensibility of the paintings as artificial composites of discrete elements.

Eddy quickly discarded the cruciform format. In the next paintings, Persistent Memories III, 1988, and Escape from Dog Island, 1988, both from 1988, we meet our old friends Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck but, now, as Masters of Ceremony of an entirely new scenario. (Figs. 73 & 74)

Figs. 73 Don Eddy, Persistent Memories III, 1988, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 in., private collection. Fig. 74 Don Eddy, Escape from Dog Island, 1988, acrylic on canvas, 55 x 40 in., private collection.

In Persistent Memories III, Mickey hovers around the sea-drenched rocks in the lower right of the painting. He appears in his costume as the sorcerer's apprentice of "Fantasia," proffering his star-topped wand in a gesture of wizardry as if to still the waters and to call forth the sun that breaks through the heavy cloudbank in the seascape behind him. A busy Donald Duck assumes prominence in Dog Island. Poised between a map and a perfect Caribbean day, Donald, sporting his sailor's middy and cap, seems to take the role of a jaunty, energetic vacationer on the move, or as the title suggests, to be making a comic 'bee-line' out of the composition and off the picture surface. However we interpret his determined step, his energy activates the composition and references motion. Mickey's and Donald's interaction with the scenes behind them introduces a subtle sense of narrative that lends a magical reality and new level of congruity to the diverse strata of superimposed imagery.

Mickey and Donald are joined in their activities by items excerpted from the shelves of the newest round of cabinet paintings (Dreamreader's Cabinet I-VII; and Dreamreader's Harvest I and II). The flowers, fruit, vegetables, candy, toys and jars of color function as continual reminders of the complexity, originality and richness of the color series paintings. Yet as they appear in Dog Island and Persistent Memories III, they underscore the clarity, balance and open formats of Eddy's new approach. The placement, shapes, colors, patterns, and diverse identities of the few select items that now appear establish lively compositional counterpoints and rhythms. Their greater prominence functions like a passkey to a yet keener understanding of the role of sensory perception and experience. For example, a single, splendid aromatic rose directs us to our sense of smell, its soft petals to our sense of touch; the ripe peaches, plums, pepper, tomatoes, and candy direct us to our sense of taste; color and especially the dulcet seascape direct us to our powerful sense of sight. A new element, the map that appears in Dog Island, replicates the island we see on the horizon in the vista geographically (that is diagrammatically), and drives home points about vision, sight, and the processing of that perception, in this case, especially in the form of abstract spatial conceptualization. Donald's and Mickey's appearance in Persistent Memories and Dog Island was to be their final curtain call. It was Eddy's final salute, as well, to these faithful companions of the color series. By 1989, with the cabinet paintings, Dreamreader's Harvest and Dreamreader's Harvest II, the toys disappeared altogether, completely replaced by carefully arranged assortments of fruit, vegetables, eggs and flowers that became the new objective of the artist's reflections on bright color and complex form. Like a novice about to be ordained in the mysteries of Nature's course and way, Eddy's new selection was the portal through which he had to pass from his final steps in the academic study of color into the world of nature's prism. Testimony to his arrival at an important juncture in his creative process was given in a sequence of three small paintings, prompted by a commission and nostalgia, and, not accidentally, entitled Passage (A, B, and C, all dated 1989). (Fig. 75) Eddy used the cabinet construct one last time to recap the transition from toys to fruit and flowers, and to attest to the major shift in his pictorial vocabulary that was taking place. Passage was the artist's farewell to the mirrored cabinet that had served him so well.

Fig. 75 Don Eddy, Passage A, B, C, 1989 acrylic on canvas, each panel 32 x 32 in., private collection.

In the next group of paintings, Dreamreader's Table I - VI, we find the fruit, vegetables, eggs and flowers of the cabinet paintings freed from the discipline of that construct and, in a surprising about-face, decoratively displayed across what is meant to be understood as a white table surface. (Fig. 76) The compositional format of the Dreamreader's Table paintings recalls the monumental scale and incisive excerpting associated with Pop Art. It functioned as a necessary exercise of sorts for Eddy. He 'pumped up the volume' by reversing the black void of the "C" sets into a white ground, accentuating and the bright, colorful array of nature's palette and setting her eccentric shapes into high relief. The format provided the opportunity to play for a moment with the decorative aspects of picture making.

Fig. 76 Don Eddy, Dreamreader's Table V, 1990, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 50 in., private collection. Fig. 77 Don Eddy, Supplicant Way, 1990, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 in., private collection.

In 1990, Eddy alternated between the "Dreamreader's Table" paintings, and the development of diverse compositional strategies using landscapes and seascapes. In Supplicant Way, 1990, for example, branches of flamboyant, notable for their trumpet-like bright red flowers, are inserted in a middle ground of sorts, between a private offering table and the seascape. (Fig. 77) In an uncanny way, such structuring of a painting through the superimposition of various overlays presages popular later 20th century techniques for creating images, such as cascading in current webpage construction, or the various overlay processes so essential to the special effects of current cinematic productions. The altar in Supplicant Way symbolizes a respectful plea to Nature by the artist to find a proper voice as one of her poets. It is a reminder of the long standing dialogue between artists and Nature on such overarching topics as creation, imitation, invention, inspiration, fantasy, variety, idea, mood, purpose, the life of the spirit and life cycles. A quickly passing rainstorm energizes the background of the painting, setting off a game of shifting light and shadow across the water and white sands of the distant shore.

Fig. 78 Don Eddy, Brightly colored Numen, 1992 acrylic on canvas, 50 x 34 in. private collection.

Twenty Fifth Time Zone, 1989 and Brightly colored Numen, 1992, mark the final stages of Eddy's journey in the study of color. (Fig. 78) They represent experiments in mesmerizing intensity delivered through the superimposition of screens of vibrant red/green flamboyant branches and other brightly colored, subtropical foliage over stretches of open, deep blue skies and rich turquoise seas. Eddy's route to the discovery of his personal palette - his color identity so to speak, had begun in earnest for a second time around 1980. It had been sparked by a keen awareness of formal, conventional and cultural attitudes of later 20th century society towards color, especially as characterized in the arena of high art by the notion that color could, and even should, take the place of objects, and, in the arena of the consumer, advertising and entertainment sectors by the premise that bright, high pitched color schemes attract buyer or viewer attention. However, since color was so important to him and since the relationship between color and identity is always very subjective, he decided to search out and to configure a personal rationale for his palette, rather than to adopt a pre-existing one. Though he had already developed a highly original system with color - in his overlay technique, he knew that the system could take him only so far. Armed with this knowledge and with skill, it had allowed him to acquire a firm grasp of value and of surface vibration in painting, and, accordingly to develop facility and ingenuity in the expression of qualities associated with sight and with late 20th century artificial, technological visual systems. As he fashioned and followed his self determined gauntlet in search of 'me' color, he began to shift his position from the view that in a hierarchy of components of picture making color had to perform a function within the context of things - for example, in the service of form. He came to understand that color could function on equal terms with form and space in his work, and could thereby provide another level of tension in the image making process. (Footnote 60) Central to Don's beliefs as an artist and a thinker, is the concept that tension, or dialectic, to put it another way, is fundamental to the human condition on every level. It allows the formulation of such critical polarities as material / spiritual; empirical / ideal; subject / object; positive / negative; romantic / classical; yin / yang. Eddy's willing, open engagement of intense color in the 'landscape' paintings of the early 90's, had opened the door to the full recognition of the place of dialectic within the poetic spirit and voice. It was in this moment that he made the shift from formulating fundamentally didactic visual images to spinning poetic visions, ripe with mysteries meant to be unlocked and shared. Eddy's final battle with color was won through the realization that the individual properties and aspect of pure bold, unadulterated pigments overwhelmed him; he was fascinated by the fundamental separateness of true color and of the condition of unadulterated chaos that follows such a perception. He finally realized, through the filter of Hawaii and the Caribbean, that pure, bold color was 'me' color. Henceforth, his challenge and pleasure was to find ways to introduce pure color as a component of the grander scheme belonging to his personal art of picture making. The job was not an easy one but the prospect of gaining control of such a potentially eloquent and powerful expressive device was exhilarating.

Fig. 79 Don Eddy, After the Storm, 1993 acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 in., private collection.

Though still a product of the synthetic overlay process, a painting entitled After the Storm, 1993, is a harbinger of things to come. (Fig. 79) With a single triumphant hibiscus flower, Eddy discloses the small miracle of fragile flowers whose life span is only a day that had weathered a storm powerful enough to fell trees. Still wet from the rain, the flower's radiant glow speaks of light that overtakes darkness and gives rise to rainbows. A classical balance is struck in the controlled counterpoint of the diverse systems and strategies at work in the painting - from the study of the single monumental flower on the picture surface superimposed on windswept vista, to the arched form of the flower reverberated in the arc of the rainbow, to the rich roles played by contrasts of light and dark. In After the Storm, we sense the transformation of 'real' experience into the language of symbols and allegory.

 

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