Visions from Infinity: Shine and Magic in Maxine Nodel’s Hyperrealism

Westchester artist, Maxine Nodel, recently received an extensive review of her nature painting by Italian art critic and journalist, Ippolita Sicoli from the Italian arts journal, IL Centro Tirreno Italy. A link to the original article is listed below along with the translated version. Maxine has been invited to have a solo show in Cosenza Italy in 2022.

Translated Below From: https://ilcentrotirreno.it/lafinestrasullospirito/2-uncategorised/12380-visioni-dall-infinito-lucentezza-e-magia-nell-iperrealismo-di-maxine-nodel.html

Author: lppolita Sicoli: http://lafinestrasullospirito.it

What sense could the Infinite have if there were no Man to adore it and incorporate it within himself? This is the great responsibility to which we are all called every day, when facing the sun, and which in the rush of modernity many of us seem to have lost. There is therefore a need to reconsider through looking and listening at the simplicity that is offered to us through the encounter with the infinite. And this is how much the works of Maxine Nodel, an extraordinary art teacher, seem to suggest to all of us, inviting us to rediscover in the face of the infinite sea and sky the belonging to the sense of mystery that sinks and gives breathe to the Universe. Simplicity welcomes us if we smooth our corners. It appears to us visible, inviting us to redesign the maps of the lost world in which to trace our most authentic roots.

What is Art if not the translation of the primal impulse with which the soul understands and extends the infinite? What value could Art have if not that of reuniting with the Truth and pushing man to go beyond? Each horizon has the double value of concluding the journey of the gaze and of pushing the soul beyond the visible. This is understood by the eyes and nourishes within itself the sense of recollection procured by the definition that and how much is described. At its opposite we find the tendency to go beyond the horizons. Where the gaze is satisfied, the soul still desires and its realization takes place in the beyond. The longing for the infinite is born and develops in every animated being and not only in man. The infinite in the case of the human being expresses the soul’s need to seek beyond horizons, where the idea of ​​Truth can mature through artistic expressions.

At first glance it seems an oxymoron the intersection of the infinite with the end and of the logical characteristics that belong to them respectively. And yet, and how much Art achieves, making a rebirth not so much of reality as much of the Truth that reaffirms itself along paths deemed improbable by logic, but practicable by the subtle fibers of being. The sea and the sky have always been man’s favorite objects with which to represent his thirst for infinity. The innate need that matures through the feeling of perennial nostalgia that the earth gives him, confronts him with the two fabrics, one fluid of the sea and the other ethereal of the sky. If the sea has a beginning and an end, the horizon is the limit of the world ends and the beginning of the sky. From their intersection, the exploratory need seems to come to life that matures in the depths of the soul of the most sensitive ones who are inclined to savor the Creator through the spaces of Creation.

What is shown tangible through the eyes, is not so for the soul and vice versa. In the same way, and through the colors and the reproduction of the boundless character of the sea and the sky in the painting, the soul recreates itself, revealing its creative nature. Recreating by recreating oneself is one of the qualities that we associate with the liquid tissue of the sea, which has always been considered therapeutic also for the salt it contains, salt that corrodes, files and cures. The same can be said of the expanses of the sky where desire and fear, or sacred fear of the immense that is told, have always shaken man. As seats of the dominant archetypes, sea and sky are the origin and ultimate goal of every human ride in the terrain of adventures dominated by time that compresses everything and in which everything is expressed, except the thirst for freedom. Those who are born and live on the shores of the ocean absorb all this and the thrill of the air interrupted only by the phrasing of the waves that chase each other incessantly without ever reaching each other, and it is precisely in this frenetic and sometimes calm chase the taste of beauty that evokes the sea, together with the sense of freedom that you breathe overseas. On this basis, America has built a call for those who live on this side of the ocean and has always recognized it as the champion of the future linked to the concept of affirmation achieved through freedom.

The artist that I intend to tell you through her paintings has nourished herself on the Ocean, indeed on both oceans, the marine one and the celestial one that she brings together through the skill of her brush, in the heart of those who let themselves be wonderfully involved by the her works. Maxine Nodel, from New York, surprises for the simplicity of her person capable of executing and collecting on canvas the astonishing primitiveness of Creation immersed in infinity. If it is true that simple souls are able to perceive and lull within themselves the multiform nuances that surround us, Nodel is able to send back to the visitors of her works that sense of sacred and magical tranquility accompanied by the achieved completeness that only souls deeply satisfied by the influx of life realized.

The meeting of sea and sky is surprising for the veracity of the pictorial touch that Maxine gives to her works, leaving them to appear properly alive, more than what the infirmity reveals in its uncertain features. Ritually, every day takes place in the meeting of sky and sea is composite and never chaotic. Maxine recreates and not artificially, but in their delicate and somewhat vehement consistency, the two fluid and ethereal realities, re-offering us through a repatriation into the archetypal alphabet, that correspondence and that call that is in the implicit sense of houses and that speaks to us through perception of the infinite. Maxine’s works are a return to the primordial cradle, to that primitiveness that is believed to reside in the first single-celled water creatures and in the sidereal dust fallen from the sky. “The sea and a part of the sky and the sky and the aleph of the sea” seem to suggest the works of Maxine, with the great shining eye that governs, animates and shapes everything, flourishing or letting itself disappear under the the horizon. Beyond him rests the night that equals everything and is the bearer of dreams that then with the light will find the right place among the brushstrokes of Maxine

The art of Maxine Nodel is absolutely therapeutic and also magical, deeply alchemical in the almost metallic luster of the paintings: visions of a reality baked from the forge of creativity that cancels every ripple and lesion present in the dimension of the poster and that life procures. The waves are caressing brackish hills that return to heaven like lost brides. The clouds are angels who resurrect sheep in the eyes of children and graze on the pristine meadows of heaven. Everything as if it were a series of photographic shots without filters because nature needs nothing more than to be listened to and filmed. We have everything in us and beyond us, in our surroundings and in the immensity that is between us and for us and that, for this reason, we must always be grateful. In this we can feel the sacred impulse impressed and exalted by the works of Maxine, already suggestive in the names that take up and underline the sense of sacredness that rises and expands from the works. Scattered clouds or icebergs that emerge like distant shores, like hermitages of the deep North, land of the unreachable and frontier with the sky. Nodel’s works are charismatic in the idea of ​​movement that is accomplished in the paintings, scenes that few are accustomed to, because Nature is no more surprising. And this is where the magical character of Maxine’s works comes into play. They bring the image (from Imago) back to the matrix, so that man can rediscover within himself of who he is son and the absolutely true task he has on this earth, that is to regenerate himself by conserving himself. To recreate by recreating oneself, remaining rooted in the dimension of Creation.

“il Centro Tirreno.it”
Lecturer at the Federiciana Popular University, Specializing in Esoteric Disciplines, Anthropology, Etiology and Mythology, she has participated as a speaker at conventions and conferences. He has published the following works: “II canto di Yvion – Journey beyond silence” first edition Wip Edizioni 2003, second edition Ma.Per. Publisher 2014. The novel “Story of Ilaria and her star” Edizioni Akroamatikos 2008. The collection of children’s stories “Stories of sheep and wizards” Ed. Albatros 2010. The novel “The furrow in the stone” Publisher Mannarino 2012. 11 essay anthropological “In the womb of light” Carratelli Editore 2014.

2020 – Gwynne Lennon Prize for Drawing – Annual Members Juried Exhibition – Salmagundi Club, NY

http://www.salmagundi.org/content.cfm/salmagundi/SCNY-ANNUAL-MEMBERS-EXHIBITION-2019/id/467

2020 – New Rochelle for Council for the Arts – Rotunda Gallery Virtual Exhibition:

Black and White: The Absence of Color – Westchester, NY

https://www.facebook.com/nrcarotundagallery/videos/843254083242021/

https://youtu.be/oQikXkmlQgU

https://artswestchester.org/events/virtual-exhibit-black-and-white/

2019 – Group Show – Annual Thumb Box Juried Exhibition – Salmagundi Club, NYC

2019 – Group Show – Annual Black and White Juried Exhibition – Salmagundi Club, NYC

2019 – Salmagundi Fall Auction – Salmagundi Club, NYC

https://www.artsy.net/artist/maxine-nodel

2018 -Invited by the Edward Hopper House  to give a public art talk about my design-based drawing project: ‘Eyes On America’

2018 – Silver Medal Award – Annual Members Exhibition – National Art League, NY

2017 – Ist Place/Gold Medal Award – Annual Juried Members Show – National Art League, NY

https://www.nationalartleague.org/2017-first-place-winners-show

2016 – Best in Show/1st Place Award – Black and White Juried Exhibition – National Art League, NY

2015 – Best In Show/1st Place Award – Annual Juired Member Exhibition – Blue Door Gallery, Yonkers, NY

2014 – Artist of the Month – Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY

https://nyacknewsandviews.com/2014/03/lai_maxine-nodel/

https://beaconarts.org/events/maxine-nodel-opening-reception-in-nyack/

2013 – Exhibition – The Highline Loft Gallery, Chelsea, NY

https://www.artslant.com/ew/events/show/375466-iaf-international-art-festival    2013 – Honorable Mention – Small Matters of Great Importance   International Juried Show – Edward

Hopper House, Nyack, NY

2013 –  Group Show – Catalyst Gallery, Beacon, NY

http://catalystgallery.com/?attachment_id=980

2013-Present – Outdoor Public Installation – Beekman Street Banner Project – Beacon, NY

2012 – Group Show – Upstream Gallery, Dobbs Ferry/Hastings-On-Hudson, NY