#405 Cosmic Earth - Oasis Series 26, 1999-2000

Oil on linen, 44" x 45" (Coll: Lars & Joanne Svanberg)

Cosmic Earth Oasis Series

For Isham, the human and animal worlds are one, and it is this wise community of beasts, humans, birds, reptiles and plants - a community not mediated by cultural codes - that inhabits her canvases. Isham achieves this mediating effect through the painterly realization of the lifecycle itself. Images appear from within a kind of color and energy lava that seems to form them. In the very making of these images, we have a certain geological and zoological sense of something being 'in process', of a lack of finality. This lava forms the images but it can also dissolve or melt it. Edward Solanski, critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, perceptively noted: "Isham's work is ultimately not about describing or symbolizing but about generating life force, which she does with considerable exuberance."

 -- Alexander Borovsky

   Professor  / Curator at Russian State Museum