The NYT reported today that Lee Nagrin died. Her Bird/Bear won an Obie Award for best new American play. What the report didn't mention was that she was in "The Blob" with Steve McQueen. "In 1958, Nagrin appeared alongside Steve McQeen in the cult film The Blob, and was offered a four-year studio contract by Paramount. Nagrin declined the offer in order to pursue a creative life in New York City."(this came from her website.)
She was known for her work in the theater and her painting. Nagrin was in her mid -thirties when she began what she considers to be her mature work . Between 1965-1980, Nagrin made her large industrial lacquer paintings. (She became fascinated with lacquer in her teens.)
"I worked primarily in industrial lacquer because of its luminous transparent quality which I felt was needed to express the spiritual content in the work. I both painted with it and poured it. I painted the ground of each painting, usually over some time, and then knowing the work very deeply, I poured the linear structure. It was such a singular process, so I would be tireless and focused to discover its selfness [sic]. The way I painted was choreographic, I was dancing, there was this continuous flow from the heart to hand." Nagrin made an important shift in 1979 and began to paint in watercolor and used it to source the seeds of her theatre.
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1 comments:
Nice to read these details about Lee's work with lacquer. Later, she also worked with wax as medium.... Happy to note, a book (on which Lee worked in her last year) is being produced documenting all of her visual-art and theatre-art work -- something we can look forward to, some later season.
cheers,
d.i.
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