By Paul Varnell
Contributing writer

Chicago Free Press

Dallas-based artist Ginger Fox has developed an appealing style of painting—she calls it “organic surrealism”—in which she combines the natural with the artificial or imagined.

Fox began her career by working with interior designers, creating murals and eye-fooling “trompe l’oeil” works, increasingly leaning toward a “hyper-realistic, slightly surreal” style. Just two years ago she decided to devote herself full-time to painting, moving increasingly toward her current style of surrealism, which we might think of as the realistic depiction of the impossible.

“Between Heaven and Earth,” the title of her current exhibition at Portals, a gallery particularly friendly to contemporary surrealism, emphasizes scenes suspended in the middle of the air as a wide variety of birds—robin, wren, heron, quail, titmouse-scarlet tanager, etc.—fill nests resting on long strands of rope or suspend fruits or other objects on the rope.

For example, in a painting titled “Cherry Picker,” a bird called a bee-eater places a cherry in a small blue bowl that is somehow balanced on the right side of a rope. On the left side two bright red pomegranates with their leaves are similarly suspended, perhaps also by the bird, although the fruits seem too large for the bird to manage.

In another painting, amusingly titled “Sommelier” (or wine steward), a quail brings grapes to suspended cable, on which is also balanced a bowl filled with corks. A corkscrew has somehow been screwed into and through the cable.

“Holding It Together” depicts a little wren holding a small branch, which with two others forms a tripod at the top of which rests a nest containing cherries. The whole rests on a large blue egg—again suspended on a rope in the middle of the air.

A slightly different approach to the theme of mid-air events is presented in “Adoption Paper.” Three rocks of increasing rotundity (reminiscent of M. C. Escher’s 1945 etching “Three Sphere”) are placed on a narrow ledge, topped by a small blue egg. Up in the air a picture of a scarlet tanager holds a string that is tied around the egg, as if to carry it off, adopting it. The interaction of a picture with the real world (of the painting) is a familiar device in surrealism, but Fox gives it a fresh, individual twist here. Fox identifies the picture as an actual page from a book of paintings of birds by the early American naturalist John James Audubon (1785-1851).

Another clever adaptation of the theme is in “Written in the Wind,” in which three peacock feathers are wired together to create a weathervane that is poised on a corkscrew wire screwed into a blue egg balanced on the direction indicator. There are no actual birds in the painting, but the pointer end of the weathervane is the copper point of an old-fashioned ink pen that somewhat resembles a bird’s head with a visible eye ad beak.

Where there are no birds, there can be butterflies. “Toying with a Solution” depicts what is obviously a gyroscope balanced on a rope, but instead of a rapidly rotating wheel in the middle to produce the stabilizing balance, there is a stationary seashell with a small blue egg balanced on top. Two butterflies on the upper left and right gracefully loop string around the gyroscope frame.

Not all the paintings involve mid-air suspensions, however. A few have other themes. “El Niño,” for instance, is dominated by a large red robe or cloth, but also includes a small picture of bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and a picture of Mary in a long, white garment, although there is, in fact, no niño, no infant Jesus. Perhaps that is the point.

It would by possible to go through each of the dozen or so paintings, pointing out interesting and attractive (and sometimes gently amusing) features, but these are surely enough and may serve to induce readers to visit Portals and see the paintings themselves. They all, in one way or another, demonstrate the continued and increasing vitality of the surrealist tradition when it is handled with creativity and grace by an artist who can adapt it to her own purposes.

(My thanks to the artist for identifying several of the birds I did not recognize.)

“Between Heaven and Earth” is at Portals, Ltd, 742 N. Wells. The exhibition runs through August. More paintings by Ginger Fox are being shown at Portals’ fall season opening beginning Sept. 5.