Sandy Freckleton Gagon, “Ignis Mare,” oil on panel, 16 x 22 in.

Given all of the counter-productive and even at times anti-social uses that social media have been put to, it’s easy to wonder if the Internet and its offspring are worth the cost in technology, energy, and time they consume. So it’s good to know that there are whole swaths of online activity that generously reward its consumers by connecting them to sources in ways that benefit both. For instance, once an art lover finds the Phillips Gallery’s website, one can see page after page of thumbnails—expandable images of virtually all the art that has been shown in the gallery in recent years—listed by artists’ names as well as their exhibitions. Or a curious or enthusiastic patron can search further, directly for the artist’s own site, which often will include not only pictures of their art but personal stories about the works, how they came about, and what they mean to those who created them.

Of course not everyone will choose this path to the pleasures of art. Some, especially those who live near the gallery or have occasion to travel to where the original art is located, will still want to see it for themselves. While major art museums in Europe, Asia, and the Americas offer not only great art, but the amenities of their cities to enjoy, even a neighborhood gallery can provide a life-affirming or life-changing experience. At one gallery, they may devote an entire room or even a wing to a single artist, helping the visitor to see that individual in depth. Or there’s the approach of Phillips, where they often hang the work of two artists together, intermixed so as to better reveal what they have in common and how each is unique.

So we come to the present exhibition, which features the work of two mature and accomplished women, each of whom is accessible in person, such as at an opening, or by appointment, or through their web pages for those who imagine corresponding with a favorite. Here’s a little about each, offered with the knowledge that they have been frequently covered online, should one wish to know more. Not everyone prefers to approach art through text: some prefer to encounter visual images directly, through their own eyes. We hope to accommodate both approaches.

Sandy Freckleton Gagon, “Burden Lifter,” oil & gold geaf on panel, 24 x 18 in.

Sandy Freckleton Gagon is a highly skilled oil painter who is known to explore not only her subject matter, but her medium. A few years ago she experimented with painting on silver or gold leaf instead of a conventional primer. Her “Burden Lifter” presents a hawk taking on the weight of the title load and flying before a full moon. Each of these elements has some personal significance to the artist, but anyone who has felt the relief of having some unwelcome weight lifted may appreciate the added sense of luminous departure provided by the warm silver surface. In “Force of Nature,” the silver becomes a part not just of the painting, but of the image: half of the leaves that swirl around the apparent figure of Nature personified are silver leaf, which form a layer not entirely within the painting, but seeming to emerge from it. In theatrical arts, this is known as “breaking the fourth wall.”

Gagon has also experimented with replacing the conventional stretched canvas by using ACM or aluminum panels. AI nonsense notwithstanding, canvas was introduced during the Baroque age and was thought, thanks to its flexibility, to produce a more responsive surface for the popular techniques of chiaroscuro and tenebrism. The fine control that Gagon prefers calls for a more rigid surface, and her helpfully informative title cards distinguish between canvas and panel. In a work like “Ignis Mare” (Fire of the Sea), while all the depicted surfaces are roughly textured, it was the smooth and rigid surface underneath that made the precise detail possible.

Sandy Freckleton Gagon, “Beauty From Ashes,” oil on panel, 24 x 30 in.

Gagon enjoys sharing the stories behind her paintings with their admirers, and some of the stories are quite moving and even deeply spiritual in a non-denominational manner. She tells of an event following the death of a irreplaceable companion, which she didn’t want to share in the moment, and of another friend who knew and discretely left a personal gift in sympathy: a thoughtful gesture that gave her the subject of a painting. There are similar stories behind so many of her works, which some of her audience will want to know, but there are others who may prefer to relate the emotion that comes through the art to their own lives first.

Few issues are more conflicted in art than that of influence. In addition to her study of technical possibilities, Gagon has favorite artists whose having “been there first” she often recognizes as she paints the objects that are her primary source of inspiration. She found a sheep skull that appears in two paintings in the current show, which images serve as a kind of homage to Georgia O’Keeffe, who was a huge influence on 20th-century art, even though Gagon is certain she wasn’t thinking directly of O’Keeffe when she painted them. Closer to a deliberate homage, “Birdsong” locates a bird that was important to her in a window that, while it looks nothing like the windows in the watercolors of Andrew Wyeth, feels like it could have been one of them. Another different, but somehow related form of influence comes from those Gagon has known long enough for them to have interacted with the process by which she chooses her subjects. Certain objects, for instance, reminded her of Bonnie Phillips, or reminded Phillips enough of her to make the connection. It’s often said that a gallery and its artists form a stable, with both meanings implied. Phillips and Gagon prove the rule.

The other artist on exhibit this month is Corinne Geertsen. To say Geertsen is a photographer would not be wrong, but it would be over-simplifying on a grand scale. While she always has the option of pulling out her camera and augmenting her found images, she works primarily from a couple of vintage collections, one of which features various generations of her family while the other draws on the history of photography. From these she selects parts that she combines into new images. Normally I object to the term “seamless,” but here it is literally accurate: there is nothing on the print to give away its diversity of origins, other than the psychic incongruity that marks the presence therein of her guiding spirit—which is the original meaning of “genius.”

Corinne Geertsen, “Open Season,” 2/25, digital photo collage, 14 1/2 x 11 1/4 in.

There are undoubtedly those among Geertsen’s audience—“fan base” scarcely seems too strong a word for them—who assume that her point is always humor, up to and including satire. In reality, though, she divides her own work into seven categories: Companions, Mirth, Travels, Daring, Plight, Reverie, and Invention. Some of her works might fit into more than one group, but there is clear evidence that not all are so generalized in their points. “Might As Well Dance,” which appeared in 15 Bytes a while ago, appears to mock romantic conventions through its male moose and female elk dancing in human, formal attire. But close examination of its borders reveals that concealed behind a backdrop depicting Niagara Falls there’s an entire forest reduced to ashes in a forest fire. The artist places this one in “Plight.” Other environmental threats appear elsewhere. Another work, done during what is now being labeled “the era of Me, Too,” shows two Victorian ladies sharing the task of carrying a very large, antique buffalo or elephant rifle. Behind them on the wall, a formally dressed gentleman of their time sports a pair of antlers that identify him as a suitable target for their hunt. As Meri Decaria, director and curator of Phillips, put it, Geertsen can also be dark.

Which doesn’t mean it can’t be dark and amusing at the same time. One remarkable achievement turns a church dome and another, mysterious structure into a 19th-century flying saucer that might have done Ed Bateman proud. This device is lowering a mixed pair of renaissance nudes into a classic landscape painting of Eden, complete with a lion, a lamb, a serpent, and a unicorn. The title says it all: “There Goeth the Neighborhood.” It’s not a denial of the Biblical version of history: rather, a critique of how well the Earth’s stewards have done with their most important task.

Corinne Geertsen, “There Goeth the Neighborhood,” 2/25, digital photo collage, 16 x 12 in.

Contemplating the art of Corinne Geertsen at length, one thing that came to mind was the famous criticism offered by Samuel Johnson of a woman preacher, of whom he said the marvel wasn’t that she did it well, but that she did it at all. Geertsen has turned Dr. Johnson completely on his ear. In the age of Photoshop and its hundreds of children, almost anyone can place authentic cowboys on the moon, or make a rabbit as tall as a tree. But with Geertsen, it’s not that she does such things at all; rather, it’s that she does them with such great wit and panache.

Corinne Geertsen and Sandy Freckleton Gagon follow contrasting and very personal paths in their respective art works, but they both place visions in the our minds that should make us stop and wonder.

Sandy Freckleton Gagon and Corinne Geertsen, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, through May 9.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.