BRATTLEBORO — Two consecutive painting exhibits at Gallery 34 during June and July will focus on images of children caught in the fighting in Syria.
The first, “We Are All Refugees,” up now and on display until Friday, June 30, features paintings by Lori Schreiner.
The Brattleboro artist's work calls us to compassion, to take in and respond to the photos we have likely grown inured to or have kept ourselves from looking at, generated by a war in Syria that is invisible to most of us.
Schreiner says she was embarking on a series of still lifes when she saw a newspaper photo of a young boy - Omran Daqneesh - bloodied and dazed from an airstrike in Aleppo and awaiting his destiny in a chair that dwarfs his small body.
“I couldn't get this image out of my mind,” Schreiner says. “He looked so much like my brother.”
She painted from this photograph over and over again, often with slashing brushwork, red the dominant color.
“I couldn't stop painting it. I got deeper into the emotion as I went along,” says Schreiner, who completed most of the paintings in one sitting, working quickly in a kind of emotional paroxysm.
She characterizes her work as tending toward abstract, focused more on emotional content than “specifics.”
In my interview with Schreiner we acknowledged to each other our feelings of frustration and helplessness in the face of so much killing of innocents by both sides in the Syrian conflict.
“I had to do something. Using my art to raise awareness - that's my way of doing something,” Schreiner says.
While she was in the midst of the first paintings, President Donald Trump signed his proposed travel ban prohibiting refugees from the war-torn country.
“I was devastated,” she recalls, but the government's actions firmed her resolve to stay focused on Syrian children.
Describing her process, Schreiner says she goes deeper as she works, tears often coming while she paints the images, most of which are similarly inspired by news photos.
“I feel the children with me,” she says.
The show's title, “We Are All Refugees,” is certainly accurate in these United States.
Schreiner, who has spent many years working for and with children at Health Care and Rehabilitation Services of Vermont as area manager for the outpatient clinic, herself has a pertinent family history.
Her great-grandfather was part of the opposition political party in Germany when the Nazis ascended to power; her grandfather became a political refugee and fled to the United States. Many of his friends who stayed in the country were killed.
Schreiner hopes to create a book from the paintings in “We Are All Refugees,” writing text to accompany her works.
This next step is similar to a previous project, where a friend, Theresa Senato Edwards, wrote poems to accompany Schreiner's series of paintings, inspired by historic portrait photographs of children taken for recordkeeping when they entered the concentration camp, their numbers under them.
The book that resulted, Painting Czeslawa Kwoka: Honoring Children of the Holocaust, was published in 2012.
“A Last Look,” one of the painting-poem pairings in the book, was awarded the Tacenda Literary Award for best collaboration, and the book as a whole won the award for best book.
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Carol Boyes, whose show of paintings, “Refugees - Bearing Witness,” will open on Friday, July 7, has worked with children, too - for 33 years in the area as a pediatric physician assistant.
This is the Putney artist's first show and the first time her work background has intersected with her painting life.
“At a certain point,” she tells me, “I became aware of the magnitude of the refugee crisis. I started to think about what it takes to put your family on a boat, or walk across countries, crawling under barbed wire.”
“And I've worked with children forever. I started asking myself what I could do. And I thought, 'I can be brave enough to have a show of paintings. I'll paint the plight of these children - their fear, but also their resiliency, their joy.”
Boyes and Schreiner, who were both working on their paintings in the River Gallery School's adult studio class, came to their projects separately. But once they realized their work was focused similarly on children caught in the Syrian fighting, they started sending each other images to work from.
Their styles are quite different.
Schreiner is the more painterly of the two, and she has many more years of painting under her belt, going back to the Art Students League of New York. She has been painting at the River Gallery School since 1988.
Boyes admits to a rough start in her early days as a painter.
“I dropped out twice - in tears. Each time [River Gallery School Cofounder] Ric Campman actually telephoned me, encouraging me. He said, 'When something's in you that needs to come out, it's like birth. Honor that pain!' I came back!”
After literally painting in a closet at the school until her confidence grew, and then a period of painting on her own, she recommitted herself to working at the school in Lydia Thompson's adult studio class.
“I value the gentle wisdom of the people in that class,” she says.
Boyes's paintings concentrate for the most part on the children's circumstance, and she often paints them against the bleak background of refugee camps. These images, too, are usually based on news photos. Several take in a long view of the refugee camps, with their row upon row of tents.
Her portraits aim for realistic representations. They are remarkable for their ability to capture an expression, the emotion of the moment, be it bewilderment, fear, or a child's wonderment, despite all.
She says that while she was painting, “I'd be saying to myself, to them, 'I'm trying my best to get you and your story out to people. You're not forgotten.'”
Boyes has invited others at RGS who have worked on paintings with a similar theme to hang their work on the large wall that is part of the print studio next to the gallery. Some of Schreiner's paintings will carry over to this show as well.
The work of Boyes (and company) will be up through the month of July.
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On July 9, the Sunday following the opening of Boyes's exhibit, the public is invited to read poetry or prose related to the subject of refugees: an original piece, or one authored by someone else.
The reading event, “We Are All Refugees: Bearing Witness,” will take place in the RGS print studio adjacent to the gallery from 4:30 to 6 p.m.
Participants may sign up at the gallery during Boyes' opening July 7 or sign up at the event.
Admission to “We Are All Refugees: Bearing Witness” is by donation (both readers and audience). All proceeds will be given to Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee.
For more information, email info@writeaction.org or call the River Gallery School at 802-257-1577.