Florence Griswold Museum

 

           

 

This past week I went to the Florence Griswold Museum. My mother was supposed to come with me but she was unable to, so I again went alone. I was a beautiful day and there was hardly any traffic going to Old Lyme and the drive was shorter than I expected. Driving up, the estate was a mixture of old and new. It had the original building when Mrs. Griswold was alive but it also had the modern building in the back of the estate that blended beautifully with its surroundings.

 

The boarding house where Mrs.Griswold took care of and allowed the artist to express themselves freely was in pristine condition and it was interesting to know that the artist painted on the doors of the interior.  Also the dinning room had the walls painted by all the artist. Something interesting to know was that they only had one woman artist living at the boarding house.

 

Moving on to the main building. In my opinion it looks bigger from the outside than what it is on the inside. In the main exhibition room the have the Big Paintings of Peter Halley. I was not expecting what I saw. The magnitude of these painting was impressive also the time that Mr. Halley must have spent on each painting. 

      

Cartoon Network, 1997
Acrylic, florescent acrylic, metallic acrylic,
and Roll-a-Tex on canvas

The paintings in this gallery come from a period in Mr. Halley's life were he was very productive in his work. Mr. Halley developed the geometric icons using a somber color palette punctuated by bright passages of fluorescent Day-Glo colors and rough texture surfaces.  The rectangles or solid squares are cells, indicating the space and structures that separate individuals from one another. In the words of Mr. Halley, "the cell is a reminder of the apartment house, the hospital bed, the school desk-the isolated endpoints of industrial structure.

 

Panic Room 2002
Acrylic, fluorescent, metallic, pearlescent acrylic
and Roll-a-Text on canvas 

 This painting was inspired by the writings of the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

 

The Acid Test, 1991-1992
Acrylic, fluorescent acrylic,
and Roll-a-Text on canvas

For this painting Mr. Halley plays with the meaning of the title. Referring to the similarly fluorescent imagery of the 1960's psychedelic drug culture within rigidly contained geometries.