Space Talk XXIV, 2004

26 1/4" x 18"

Acrylic Airbrush with collage lithographs

The Space Talk series of the 1990s, executed in the 1970s with airbrush using acrylic paint, was reconfigured in the 1990s as collages juxtaposed with cut-out lithographs, offering a dramatic contrast with the airy fields of color in the background. For Space Talk XXIII (1971-2004)  she cut out black and white fragments of lithographs that play against a misty, yellow-and-white atmosphere. Animas, people, and strange creatures of indeterminate origin seem to float in a realm of pure space.

It would be easy, but misleading, to overlook the connection between her abstract work and her more explicit renderings of animals. In fact, what links the two ways of seeing is intensity of feeling - an insistent desire to connect - that is always central to Isham's art.

What makes Isham's spiritual and esthetic inquiries so satisfying is the discerning balance she strikes between the two ways of seeing. Abstraction does not deny nature nor nature abstraction. Indeed, isham suggests in her work that if we can perceive the essential affinity between the two, we may find ways to recognize and transcend our own parochial or divisive tendencies in culture and the arts.

-Jonathan Goodman