The Creative Paintings - Lx Magazine, Illuminating Luxury

SPRING '09

Callie Hirsch, Perfectly Ripe, 2008

The most alien environment on Earth lies deep within the sea. Not only does the vast blackness of the ocean’s bot- tom resemble the far reaches of outer space, but it is also populated by creatures that might have sprung to life from our fantasies about invaders from the distant galaxies of our imagi- nation.

The strange beauty of these deep-sea denizens is captured in the paintings of Callie Danae Hirsch, an artist from Brooklyn, New York. Working on black German etch paper with iridescent, pearlescent and metallic acrylics that com- bine conventional pigments with powdered mica and bronze, Hirsch creates an imaginary underwater world as bizarre and luminescent as the one found at the bottom of the sea. Her creatures shine and shimmer above the black background of her paintings and draw the viewer into the strangeness of her alien world.

Hirsch’s creatures bear a resemblance to actual residents of the ocean’s bottom, some of which are as otherworldly in appearance as anything we can imagine from outer space. There is the Firefly squid, for example, a bioluminescent ce- phalapod that generates light through photophores in its tentacles and is capable of putting on light displays that resemble underwater fireworks. Like any good alien in science fiction, it lights up its body to attract both prey and a mate.

Hirsch is quick to acknowledge the influence that the natural world has on her paintings. Growing up in Rockland County, just north of New York City, her childhood was steeped in nature. The drama of nature fascinated her, as did its beauty and variety. It inspired her interest in creatures both real and imaginary.

This interest in nature led Hirsch to develop a strong passion for the sea. As a teenager she spent a week on the ocean living on a sailboat and scuba diving twice a day. She describes a night dive as “much like being in space. Visibility was minimal and you never knew what creature you would face in this new environ- ment.” This experience made Hirsch aware that, as she puts it, “the sea contains such fanciful and unimaginable creatures.”

For Hirsch, however, nothing seems unimaginable. Although her creatures may resemble real-life dwellers of the deep sea, she paints in a style that might be called imaginary realism. One source of Hirsch’s style was her early interest in photography. Because it seemed to her that people believed anything they saw captured on film, she strove to create bizarre images that stretched and tested that belief. This gave her a creative freedom that painting permitted her to take a step further because she no longer had to care if viewers thought her work was believable. The result was “real” creatures that might have come from an alterna- tive reality.

An artistic influence on Hirsch’s alternative reality is the work of Salvador Dali, who also bent nature to his own purposes. Other obvious influences are Kandin- sky, Klee and Miro, artists whose paintings are abstract and whimsical. Hirsch’s work is playful in a way that resembles all of these artists, suggesting that the natural world, even the world of her bizarre and alien creatures, is a fun place to inhabit (or at least a fun place to visit if you wouldn’t want to live there).