Stone Angel

Bernice Cross’s oeuvre abounds in references to the legendary, the ancient, the mystical, the symbolic. Her essentially hieratic subject matter – the angels and figure heads, the moon and sun, the queens and seers – are all a part of her imaginary world, idiosyncratic yet accessible to the viewer and often profound in their simplicity. Stone Angel is of this order, and like most of Cross’s work, somehow it avoids sentimentality, perhaps because of its humor but more likely because of its fundamental seriousness. We are led to believe in her vision, even when it becomes fantastic or when the symbolism becomes private. The stone angel depicted in this painting is poised against a rich red background as though it is about to move. The tilted column on the left and the confirming green plane on the right, behind the rail, give added life to the statue. This ability to invest life in her subjects, whatever their eccentricity, is a powerful attribute of Cross’s painting. Other attributes, purely pictorial, are the beauty of the paint surfaces, which have textural interest, and of the color, which, while often somber, is never without subtlety.