A Painter Uses the Evocative Power of Music to Express Nostalgia for the Past

What do a funerary urn and a sinking ship have in common with a Rubik’s cube and an old LP record? They’re all symbols of loss—whether dramatic reminders of human mortality or relics of a not-so-distant past—and they’re all juxtaposed together in the works of painter-sculptor Squeak Carnwath.

The passage of time is one of the artist’s favorite themes to explore. So it’s fitting that her latest exhibition, “What Before Comes After” at Jane Lombard Gallery, represents 25 years of work, and her first solo exhibition in New York in more than a decade. The show is an interesting glimpse into her creative trajectory and her continued fascination with a singular topic.

Some works, like Two of Everything and The Sea is in Between (both 2014), look more like collages than paintings, mixing Carnwath’s visual motifs—the sinking ship, the LP—with diagram-like sketches and snippets of text, some of the words and phrases intelligible, others abstract. In each individual piece, there’s a lot to look at, and several elements that feel mysterious. And yet the sensation of nostalgia is almost palpable. The same is true of a piece like Toile Ships (2014). Though the concept here is simpler—the ship motif is repeated at regular intervals, pattern-like—there’s an enigmatic feel to the painting. And thanks, in part, to another pattern overlaying the ships, this one vertical, evoking pelting rain or teardrops, there’s an unmistakably melancholy quality to the work.

Within the context of Carnwath’s career, these collage-like works represent the better part of the last decade. They might be seen as variations on earlier pieces that are also featured in the show, like Hours (1990), a vaguely foreboding mixed-media work made with charcoal, graphite, acrylic, and “dog tracks” on paper. With its scattered text and dark visual symbols—a black bird, an empty bed, sand passing through an hourglass—it can be read as the basis for Carnwath’s later works.