Open Studio Preview

June 2011

The Happening Gallery

May 2011

Born in Chicago, becoming a career woman in the sixties, and achieving success as a graphic designer in places as far reaching as Austria, Eileen's art has always reflected the tone of the most current chapter in her storied life.

A while ago, Eileen and her husband were victims of awful real estate fraud, a situation which had a massive impact on their lives. Although they are now slowly recovering, Eileen's work, as always, reflects her journey.

It is interesting to note that nowhere in these works is there a horizon line, an absence surely telling of the lack of stability in Eileen's life at the time.

"This series came out of a period of financial struggle and transient living quarters. In making these works, I noticed I was particularly comforted by the white spaces around the objects, almost as if the white spaces were where I could curl up and feel safe, like feeling I was home."

Through her art, Eileen was able to find a nurturing home environment ... even though it was only on paper.

The Brooklyn Artist Gym Show

February, 2011

Sketchbook Project

ongoing

ArtZone 461 Gallery

May 2011

Eileen Starr Moderbacher - New Small Paintings

UN-TITLED - a Group Show of Gallery Artists (review by GetBizi.com)

Intimate, is the word I would use to describe Eileen Starr Moderbacher's show "New Small Paintings." Entering the Side Gallery, the first thing I notice are images of cacti on the wall opposite the door. And because the paintings are 8"x6" in size, I am compelled to walk across the room to view each piece. Beyond the visually uncomfortable prickliness of the cacti, I am drawn in by the tiny colorful manmade article in each painting ... a pink handbag in one, a two-headed doll in the next (one in a yellow and the other in a sky blue dress), and a couple of toy ducks in another. Are these captured moments of painful childhood memories?

I have a brief discussion with the artist, Eileen Starr Moderbacher, and she tells me the cacti do represent some challenging recent experiences she endured. The articles in each painting do come from memories and a few from not-so-long-ago memories, but the interpretation is best left up to the viewers as they will draw on their own life experiences to give the art personal and intimate meaning.

UN-TITLED - a Group Show of Gallery Artists (review by RWM)

Nice group show of the artists we have been seeing at ArtZone 461 since their inception. One will find an impressive collection of art in a variety of mediums selected from the artworks of their regulars. A sculpture of a pointing hand announce that one has found the spot. There are also portraits, abstractions, landscapes, and sculpture.

Of special note is the new exhibit of Eileen Starr Moderbacher - small paintings of the desert flora. Among the cactus, if one looks closely, one will discover the human artifacts left behind. One need be aware of the needles and of nature in general. We as viewers and artists have been there.

Comments on ArtistADay.com

 

Reading the narrative "explanation" of your work, I found the "explanations" as fascinating and ultimately just as mysterious as the work itself. (Word person that I am.) But can words ever really solve the riddle of of a painting? If your paintings depict scenes that are neither real nor dream, is that place the realm of pure imagination? And what does that say about the power of imagination to make us feel more alive and more free, to offer a counterpoint to the ho-hum of our daily humdrum, the slow stagnation and routine of which is really a living death? We just gotta use the tools that inspire us, so YEAH for ART!
- Paula Wagner

Pre industrial revolution is before the 19th century. Eileen you work very well and keep up the good work.
Comment by Philip - September 16, 2009

Very interesting work. The top painting makes me think it's a murder scene or plane crash and the ghosts of the victims, bottom left, have returned. Many other paintings and drawings at her site show a progression of style changes. I like her painting style and technique.
Comment by dmgo - September 16, 2009

reminds me of the depression/holocast.
Comment by Cat - September 16, 2009

when I see this top painting, I see ghosts of the past, looking on shocked at the state of the world they work so hard for. They look scared to me, she is holding him back, but he looks alarmed! that tells me he feels an urgency to act. but there is a group of disinterested humans standing there in work clothes. this tells me, she is wary of the threat of humans that would stand around while such a tragedy happens. look @ her hair, it is a style from early America, it is PRE Industrial revolution.
I see this painting as being INspired which means it comes from truth, and the artist is tool of the spirit of truth that moves him, because it is truth, the Honor goes to the creator of truth, this artist is a conveyor of truth truth his natural gifts endowed to him by his creator, beautiful example of Inspiration combined with conscious action, I applaud your social consciousness, and your talent.
Peace, and enjoy fully discovering your own work, thats your GOD working through you.
Comment by Dawn - September 16, 2009

Could have been the cover of Harpers Magazine in the 20's. A war scene, a rocket ship crash site? A group of medical personal circa 1920. And everything is just beyound easy grasp, beyound easy understanding.
The lower image, cat women bound, distorted with Greta Garbo look alike looking away from the carnage and flames. The artist has nailed his objective, disharmony and chaos of the social order.
Comment by Jim Gibbons - September 16, 2009

This is an interesting idea for creating.
Comment by Casey Shannon - September 16, 2009

 

September 10, 2008

"Eileen's work is the first thing a visitor would notice when they come to the top of the stairs and is obviously placed there to help set the tone.
Congratulations! Looks like they gave you pride-of-place. You're the first thing anyone will notice when they arrive at the top of the stairs.
Once again you use disparate techniques effectively. I liked the contrast between the lower lush Modigliani-ish reclining nudes and the precise silver paint (is that what you used?) in the top portion. I even got a laugh out of your copy (the verb thrust used right off the bat). Also got a chuckle looking at the silhouettes when I finally noticed the anti-silhouette cocks in various relationships to vertical. It all seemed very much in the spirit of the book as you described it in your copy.
It's probably been 40 years since I read Fanny Hill and I remember nothing about it. Why was the sadist/masochist separate from the others and only partially silhouette? Incomplete as a person? Incomplete as a lover? A judgment against S&M? (The latter not very PC in an anti-censorship exhibit but it could be a sort of reverse "in" joke.) And why did you choose the portions of him to blacken that you did. (Am I turning this into Pilgrims Progress? I guess everything doesn't have to have a reason.)"
- Timothy Will

ESM at Mission 17

Artweek; April 2008, Volume 39

Eileen Starr Moderbacher begins her paintings with collage, in theory if not actually in practice and the finished works testify to the diversity of her sources; they reference dozens of different styles, from comics to vintage film, punk, pop, noir and sci-fi, with characters that seem to come from all eras, medieval to contemporary, rock art to pulp art. They ride horses and they ride motorcycles. A mysterious trench-coated woman seems to be the protagonist (the eponymous "danger girl"?), although she doesn't appear in every work, and she looks different every time, sometimes straight out of the Victoria's Secret catalog, sometimes straight out of a classic movie. The three final works in the show are composed in such a way that they zoom in on the same woman in the same Humphrey Bogart pose, but she is subtly individualized in each piece, mutating from Lauren Bacall to Veronica Lake. In other paintings the woman is Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc. The common denominator among most of the works is a warehouse-type urban setting, full of huge truck tires, junked cars, trash and industrial rubble.
In particular, the cartoonish elements, like the distorted Catwoman type in Even Darkness Has Its Own Kind of Light or Like the Transparent Path of a Bullet, pop out with a kind of lurid, dissonant glare. This is especially true when Moderbacher overlays them onto one of her rare pastoral landscapes, as with the giant legs and shoes dominating the foreground of Myth of Heroism. But "lurid" is hardly a bad thing. On the contrary, the paintings that contain these elements have an insistence that dominates the room and forces us to give them, ironically, an almost mythological reading. As in much ancient myth, the narrative is complex and the characters' motivations impossible to discern without any back-story. Yet, regardless, they are impressive and larger than life, with massive bodies and imposing stares. Catwoman's thighs could rival those of Hercules, and her strident gaze could intimidate the warrior Athena.
Moderbacher's work of a year or so ago, interestingly contained very few figures and focused mostly on landscape. But that landscape was a similar sort of hybrid as the one in these new works, juxtaposing trash and grass, the industrial and the bucolic, indicating the recent presence of humans even if none are visible in the picture. It was also a hybrid of painterly styles, and these new recent works are even more daring in that respect, with their juxtapositions of feathery impressionistic with starkly futuristic brushwork, total flatness with textural depth. The artist's decision to introduce comic-style characters to such dissonant effect point to a deliberately democratic urge - the fervent desire to confront us forcibly with the coming together of what are traditionally regarded as high and low art forms. The dissonance echoes the violence of much of her subject matter and it points, with comic-book melodrama, to how much is at stake for her in these various confrontations between the artwork and the viewer, and among the many artistic styles contained in each work.
- Lindsey Westbrook (contributing editor to Artweek.)

SF Bay Guardian Picks

Jan 30, 2008

Danger Girl Show
"Eileen Starr Moderbacher's paintings gleam like cels from a Japanese anime film. Catsuited superheroes slink up beside shackled lunatics as old tires rot near gnarled trees, leaving you unsure whether the actors are the stars of the bleak, soft-focused world around them or just casualties. Wielding realism with a pulp aesthetic, Moderbacher challenges viewers "to reconsider what aspects of life are real," posing the question with unsettling scenes from an R-rated cartoon that are a feast for the narrative imagination as well as the eye."
- Dina Maccabee

Eileen's Artist's Talk

Pro Arts Gallery, 2007

Campbell Gallery Reception

April 14, 2007

ShotgunReview

Dec 16, 2006

"There were also a number of strong works, including ... Eileen Starr Moderbacher's painting of an unpopulated residential street with a tidy home with a topiary 'Joy' on the front lawn juxtaposed with a pile of litter on the opposite corner, a sight I have seen quite often in neighborhoods developers and city planners call 'transitional'."
- Sarah Lockhart

 

Jan 16, 2006

ESM's work is often a constant jarring pairing of contrasts. She combines opposites, sharp and soft focus, plants and people, finished (?) and unfinished drawings in one piece. What is most unsettling is the juxtaposition of content. Passionate lovers take backstage to soft plants. Domestic bliss side by side with soldiers and guns. Home is surrounded by war and guns and garbage. One wonders what aspects of life the artist feels are real - the threats, the struggle or the private moments.
Situation Atrophy, [..] again feels eerie. [ESM] is demonstrating increasing strength in her characters. Although some of the characters may be part of the atrophy, or succumbing to the atrophy the woman in yellow pops off the canvas with a strength that will rise above and endure.
For me Richochet was the most compelling. In Richochet the main subject is pulling/hanging onto tree roots with all his strength (for dear life?). Two representatives of the younger generation (children?) are barely visible (fading away? staying attached?) ...connected to what he is pulling. The images provoke thoughts of roots, attachments, home, connection. All in all a powerful piece.
- Rosalyn Tenenbaum

SFGate.com

Jan 7, 2006

"The new year seems like a fine time to come clean, Mission 17's 'Truth and Lies' thoughtful group show suggests some worthwhile places to start."
- Alison Bing (special to SF Gate)

Pacific Sun

Dec 21, 2004

"When Eileen Moderbacher received word that her paintings had been chosen by the Mill Valley Arts Commission for exhibition at the community center, censorship was not at the front of her mind. That changed after a handful of complaints were lodged regarding a particular series of paintings and the works in question were promptly removed without warning.
Moderbacher responded by re-hanging the paintings - which depicted fully clothed bodies lying in roads - with large coverings labeled "censored", Numerous patrons have since expressed indignation at this seemingly blatant case of censorship, calling for reinstatement of the entire series. Ironically, it would seem that the efforts of the offended complainants have served only to stir up increased attention for the exhibition and its artist.
- Jacob Shafer

Artweek

Oct 20, 2004

"Moderbacher's Road Trip tells an eerie tale of a gloomy road scene, where each painted panel shows the same curving freeway with the same receding trailer truck in the background. In the foreground of each panel, however, bodies form the landscape, progressively more realized, in the first panels sketchy and outlined, until in the last panel they are fully depicted, piled on both sides of the roadway. This is a ghost tale of spirits left behind, disposed to remain in some traveler's dark purgatory. These panels are so beautifully painted, however, that their cumulative emotioinal impact, though ominous and gloomy, is somehow peaceful, inevitable and predestined."
- Frank Cebulski