Rural Fare and Other Concerns

July 12- August 10, 2002
Binghamton, NY

John D. O'Hern
Director and Curator
Arnot Art Museum
Elmira, New York

Daniel Mosner paints the world around him; a world whose inhabitants don't give it a second thought and would never consider themselves subjects for “art.” Their self-awareness and their absorption with their activities and their surroundings are captured by the artist who, transplanted to Upstate New York from New York city, finds his new neighbors and their lives endlessly fascinating.

Nothing embodies the breadth of rural life like a county fair. The thrills of carnival rides, the hardworking roustabouts and food court workers, excited children, proud beauty queens, and exhausted parents are all part of the scene that Mosner observes. He observes without judgment and records these brief moments in people's lives with warmth and compassion.

Mosner is not only a keen observer of this world. He is an artist who uses his already considerable skill to record theses vignettes and uses the process of recording them to perfect his skill even more.

In “Couple and Roustabouts” his compositional skill is evident in the blue stairs leading down to the central figures, the white crowd fence preventing our eyes from wandering off the canvas to the right, and the roustabout arresting us on the left. An artist less willing to challenge himself might have left it at that, but Mosner has taken the opportunity to experiment (successfully) with the way receding planes become less focused as in the walls behind the roustabout. Their naturalistic fuzziness causes the eye to jump back to the figures in the foreground.

The surreal flying figures in “Swing Ride” are, we know, attached to the mechanisms of the ride which are out of the frame of the painting. They appear suspended in space or descending from the out space as they swing blurrily by us- the blur of the background figures emphasizing their movement in the frozen frame of the painting.

Time is frozen in these paintings but the viewer has the sense that it will immediately resume. The artist captures the idiosyncrasies of the individuals, their activity, and their being part of a larger group. There is no single figure in his complex compositions of groups, each individual occupies our attention democratically until we move on to his or her neighbor.

In “Waiting for the Bumper Cars,” composition suggests a way for us to view the scene, but we are free to wander off the suggested path for additional rewards. The couple standing in the left foreground directs us by their gaze to the ramp leading to the ride. Our gaze is stopped by the woman in the right middle ground whose arched body directs us back to the scene. Beyond these technical devices are the beautifully observed moment of the arched woman's worried checking of her newly-washed sneakers as she navigates the muddy path, the bored patience of the central figures, and the excited children nearly out of the frame at the left.

Mosner gives us a brave composition in “Pig Race Crowd.” Here, strongly active figures gesture to the left and to th right, separated in the middle of the canvas by two figures; a young girl anchoring the composition at the bottom, a young man at the top, and both gazing in the direction of the viewer. Mosner anchors the center of the composition with heads at three points of a triangle painted slightly more sharply and with more contrast than the other figures. The background figures painted with less contrast suggest not only their distance from us but the heat of a hot summer day. It is his ability to capture the atmosphere of a scene both in its psychological sense and its physical content that stands out in works such as this.

Mosner's keen powers of observation allow him to capture a life in a moment offering us insight into an individual's character. In “Roustabout and Girl” the two main subjects gaze off the canvas but we know something about them by the quality of their gaze. The roustabout casts a keen eye on the machinery of the ride he is entrusted to keep safe, and the young woman looks intently into the crowd ready to call for a lost child or friend.

Innocent pride and envy are captured in “Trophy Girls.” the County Fair Queens stands modestly acknowledging her admirers while two members of her court look up at her admiringly. The artist has chosen to darken this vignette by having the beauty queen stepping out of the pure white background and towards a more somber background suggesting her passage from youth to maturity. At the lower left side of the canvas a cloud of color-rinsed white hair suggest the future for the stylishly-coiffed young girls.

The setting for Mosner's portraits is a run-down, seasonal fairground, which he captures in an equally non-judgmental way. “Lonely Sentinel”depicts a food shack, closed in the early morning light and sporting a fresh seasonal coat of red paint. The boardwalks will keep the customers out of the occasional mud and the simple benches will provide a place for a few moments rest. The battered trash can stands ready to perform its duty. This is not Disney World. This is the setting for hard-working rural Americans to relax and have a few days of fun.

Mosner celebrates light in all his paintings. It is in these fair still lifes that he observes it more keenly and tests his skill in depicting it. “Lonely Sentinel” pulsates with light reflecting off the red wall. Light casts the shadow of unseen flags across the billowing sides of a collapsing tent in “Green Tent.”

Dan Mosner has found a home in Upstate New York where he can celebrate life and both share and hone his talent.