Last summer, I paid a visit to the Lakewood home of dentist and Renaissance man John Zotos and his wife, Raquel. They have an excellent collection of works by North Texas artists from what I would describe as Dallas’ golden period—about 1997 to 2012—complemented by works from farther afield. He had two early paintings by Raychael Stine from her 2007 debut solo show at Road Agent, a short-lived (but exceptional) Dallas gallery owned by my then wife, Christina Rees. I hadn’t seen the paintings by my long-lost friend since that show. They blew me away.
So it was with great joy that I went to see the opening of her current exhibition at Cris Worley Fine Arts, on view through May 4, a gallery with which I’ve had a working relationship for several years. And now, this Saturday, April 20, Raychael will return to Dallas, the city that launched her career, where we will reunite in an artist’s talk about her current show and an opportunity for all to ponder whether I’m right in saying this exhibition is Raychael’s finest yet and a time portal back to that golden period in the city.
Her newest paintings are wonderfully sumptuous, exuberant, and emotional. Neither expressly abstract nor figurative, they can appear simultaneously like invented interiors, landscapes, and figures. Vivid and alive, the paintings thrum with energy bursting forward as if they’re in motion; the diaphanous color and the large gestures feel musically expressive, as if at times you’re almost seeing sounds. They’re complex without being fiddly and have a supreme emotional joy that makes viewers feel as if they’re painting along with her.
There are worlds within worlds. The paintings are packed with eclectic influences: from other painters, from the natural and unnatural worlds, but never worn heavily as self-conscious post-modern references but instead as original and confident modern art. Standing in front of them, you find yourself getting sucked into the painting space, examining what exactly is going on in this “Wonder Dawn,” the title of her show. Are her paintings cosmic? Did taking off for the New Mexican desert in 2013 make her go a bit woo-woo, this once teenaged prodigy from Ohio who grew up in New Jersey and then the suburbs of Dallas? The paintings often have the look of an electrically back-lit computer screen—not self-consciously digital but merely containing their own power and light source, as if they’re permanently switched on.