Squeak Carnwath: How the Mind Works

at Frederick R. Weisman Museum, Pepperdine University
Rewiewed by Nancy Kay Turner

The idiosyncratic, stream-of-consciousness, large-scale oil paintings by the Bay Area painter Squeak Carnwath are personal ruminations on everything from politics to urban anxieties and parental concerns (“PAReNTS BEWARE homework is BAD”)[sic], to name just a few of the issues that rise to the surface, unbidden like half heard conversations or bad dreams. Though the exhibition at The Frederick R. Weissman Museum on the splendid Pepperdine Campus is entitled How the Mind Works, it really could be called Notes To Self.

One wall in the first room (I must confess this is my favorite part of the exhibition), is covered from floor to ceiling with notes, sketches, drawings, playlists, written in pencil and oil paint with erasures, splotches, oil and coffee stains offering everything from process notes to anthems for better living, push-pinned casually to the wall. For example, a poignant pencil sketch states reasons to wake up in the morning” — and lists — breakfast, love,thought, sex, rain, clouds, sunlight, morning air, dogs walking, bath to wash and coffee. “Time” and “music” are added in black, painted with a brush. To the right is a rectangle with a note to self “make a striped ptg like/similar to monotype” with a quick diagrammatic sketch of that proposed image underneath the text. On the bottom, hastily scrawled are the words “cobalt glazed over white square, brn pink or bl blk over white” — interesting and valuable…