Watchery

Watchery is an ever-evolving collaboration between Marta Thoma Hall and Jeni Lila based in the historic Stone Boatyard of Alameda, CA. The two artists representing different generations of women merge their ideas to create multi-media paintings that use both softness and satire, to spark discussion about the state of the world. Often using art prints of famous and historical paintings as the canvas, Thoma Hall and Lila take turns altering the imagery in response to the original concept and each other. Their themes include the unbuttoning of the white patriarchy with a view of waste and pollution in rising sea levels amidst surreal phantoms in imagined landscapes. They paint and stitch onto heroic images of presidents, kings, generals, images which are equally beloved and reprehensible, with narratives of the western culture of the conquering hero, the heroic event, and the hero himself. The artists deploy surprising painted forms and color to evoke contradiction, spiritual visions, and erotic energy, intending to transform the original image and disrupt the memory of the traditional original. This includes flooding the canvas with an unexpected rising sea and landscapes populated with spirits, ancestral guides, and fortune tellers with spiritual connections through nerve endings of gold thread. The artwork of Watchery attempts to conjure up magic required to fill-in-the blanks, understand human history, welcome the role of the maternal, and heal. The multi-media artworks explore the intersection of the spirit and the body, the past, present, and future.

Art existed before photography as the visual means to record human history and events, yet it is an incomplete, non-photographic, far from data-complete history of humanity. It remains however, a powerful, unshakable narrative held solid in the westerner’s mind, revered as a narrative, learned from early education. We recognize the representations and narrative from traditional history and art books, frequently of the conquering king, the president, the hero, and the heroic landscape. In response to these ingrained symbols of history Watchery imagines the participation of “others,” whether they are spirits or ghosts of women and people of color who lived and died in historic obscurity, but who influenced and participated in human evolution, cultural advances, profound experiences, and powerful, important history. Watchery puts forth – If there is magic to be had it is in the maternal work of the nursemaid.

Watchery works to perform magic on the traditional images, to re-order and re-invent the scenes as if to heal the viewer from trauma, and our lack of seeing the world more fully. Most of us are steeped in the history of these portraits and scenes and carry the remains of a two-dimensional imagining of the past. A fuller historic picture of humanity includes more understanding of the enormous productive and interesting population of women, indigenous peoples, and people of all color. The emergence of the western culture has been brutal and violent, leaving in its wake war and carnage as its heroes triumphed. Culture and industry thrived at what expense. What unmentioned, uncelebrated treasures were lost in the process. In response, these artworks aren’t passive, but the artists of Watchery use color, shapes, texture, and material to seduce and beguile the viewer into seeing the old scenes and portraits in a different way.

Today thousands of historic paintings hang in art and history museums asking to be re-evaluated for context and message. Who were the kings, queens, founders of nations, generals of war as people as well as and symbols? Watchery questions their deeds and narrative of greatness through the alterations. There are no rules, no judgement, but hope in questioning what is solid, accurate, “real” about the historic collective memory.

Watchery reimagines artworks made more whole by the inclusion of spiritual longings, changing forms, flooded scenes populated with spirits of the past, present, and future. Daring to paint on top of prints of historic paintings is a gesture of confidence.

“There is power in reclaiming our voice about history, talking about our own bodies, our view of men and their bodies, reclaiming erotica, our sexuality, and our intellect. I believe that by embracing the spiritual, the erotic, the loving, the magical, women can move humanity toward a seismic sea-change.” Marta Thoma