Brehm Center

   Gardens have been center stage for Shakespeare, the canvas for Victorian English politics and wrestling grounds for green thumbs. Some are inclined to dig, finding play amidst the labor of a garden. The incarnate Christ wrestled with the will of God in Gethsemane. Divinity put on the dirt of our flesh to restore us to the garden life before our curse. The garden is a place of wrestling with the divine ever since Eden.

    Last Friday, Fuller’s Hubbard Library opened Approaching Eden, an exhibition featuring seven pieces by Patty Wickman that reveal profound in experiences set in contemporary gardens. While we seminary students seek insight and nuance in study of the Word at the library, Wickman’s artwork is an example of how to rediscover the divine in layered conversations with the seemingly commonplace.

In the life-size painting Outside the Garden, a strikingly ordinary man is caught ankle deep in the soil of his garden, as his work is distracted by something outside our view that captures the attention of even the animals surrounding him. All the while, the bright light of the garden nearly catches the revelation of mystery in its rays. This piece is one of three large paintings in Approaching Eden. Wickman’s realistic style evokes the psychological and the transcendence of human experience in the everyday. Subtly playing with focus, she renders some elements naturally soft while accentuating others with striking sharp clarity. There is enough in each of the large paintings to keep you captivated, searching, journeying deeper into the images.

   For me however, the most captivating dynamic of the work shown is the juxtaposition of Wickman’s small after-studies alongside the larger three. Four of the after-studies depict scenes from the larger paintings, but stripped down and with their key elements altered. In Outside the Garden After-study the gardening man is still grounded in mud, but his hands are in a different position, striking a notably different chord. As painters prepare a composition, it is common to sketch out studies, playing with the gestures, and juxtapositions of the subjects. However, with Wickman’s after-studies, it seems like something more is being revealed.

(pictured) Struggle Garden by Patty Wickman, courtesy of Lora Schleisinger Gallery, Santa Monica

   At Friday’s opening, I asked Wickman about the after studies, seeing that the drawing Outside the Garden After-study was completed nine years after the large painting. She explained that while she simply needed to finish a few drawings to be ready for show, there was also more she wanted to play with in the subject itself. It is like a game, she said, moving around different elements— simply changing a hand gesture or the placement of an object—changes the narrative. This reminds me that as an artist, Wickman herself is on a journey, never fully arriving even when a painting is dry and signed with satisfaction. The elements that first drew her to a composition were simply guides as, like the title of the show, she approaches something, just as her paintings themselves provide layers of meaning offering more of an invitation to a deeper conversation rather than a monologue.

   As testified by the after-studies, Wickman works with pieces that keep intriguing her even as she finishes earlier studies. For the Seminary student, the same impulse lies behind our study of scripture in relation to the world-as-we-know-it. For anyone believing in deep meaning in our life experiences, these paintings challenge us to play, even wrestle with the ordinary in our own lives to see things anew. Along the way, perhaps we will find ourselves approaching the proverbial garden, returning to seemingly familiar images of our days, putting things in fresh light, seeing how the narrative changes as we explore, dig and seek God in the midst.

   Approaching Eden will grace the Hubbard Library until November 23, inviting us to engage in the conversation of juxtapositions in the contemporary images by Patty Wickman.