Rebecca Campbell

Rebecca Campbell at Cal State Long Beach 

Rebecca Campbell sure can paint.  No doubt about that.  

But this body of work rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m realizing sincerity is something vitally important to me in painting, and I did not it find her larger works.  Her range is staggering, but to what end I don’t know.  The slickness of her smooth passages, the perfectly placed “rough” parts.. they rang very hollow to me.  They are very much a product.  Perhaps I’m jealous of her command of the medium, but I don’t feel an intentional icy remove, nor a felt gesture... just a stylistic calculation.  I read the marks as signifying things, rather than being them.  

What I’m getting at is that I respond to unity of form and content, and in this body of work by Rebecca Campbell, they did not.  I just felt the disconnect of hand and heart.