Art

Yup, it's a Whipple

The artist's distinctive visual style and his expression of many ideas distinguish Jeff Whipple's latest show, "Riled Life Refuge."

[Images from Jeff Whipple

We Are Wild Birds, 2005, acrylic on canvas.

	Fear Itself, 2005, acrylic on canvas.
	I Voted, 2005, acrylic on canvas.

ST. PETERSBURG - Most good artists speak to us in a visual language we recognize as uniquely theirs. You know when you're looking at an El Greco, Vermeer, Monet or Picasso.

Think about artists today whose work you admire and ask yourself which ones will have that same recognition in 100 years.

I don't know if Jeff Whipple will be a household name in the future, but I do know he has a signature style.

"Riled Life Refuge" is a group of new work at the Galleries at Salt Creek, sleekly installed to good effect by curator Lance Rodgers. Whipple has had some fallow seasons, but he's in fine form here. The paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and photographs show the range of his talent, almost, because Whipple is also a filmmaker and playwright.

The works at Salt Creek were completed in a short time and aren't among the meticulously composed and painted portraits in oil that are his most beautiful works.

These, especially the paintings, are done in broad strokes executed in high-spirited dudgeon rather than cerebral detachment. The larger paintings are done in acrylic on vinyl, unstretched and tacked to the walls. As with much of Whipple's work, threads of didacticism run through them, ideas reiterated among mediums like ongoing conversations.

He has a lot on his mind.

A plastic motor oil container is a recurring symbol of our reliance on petroleum, juxtaposed with a soldier in one painting titled I Voted. In You Want Me, he pairs the container with a nude woman. In these and others, he leaves a lot of white space around the images, putting them in a void that acts as a metaphor for a moral vacuum. The paint is splashed on and drips off the surface as a counterpoint to visceral slashes.

Like Jonathan Swift, Whipple channels his societal anger into witty ripostes. And like Swift, sometimes he's wickedly funny. Your Life Is in Your Hands is a print of collaged drawings of hands holding a fish, a rat and a large face seeming to be peeled away by another pair of hands. Remote Controller is a color print of a nude woman embedded (get it?) with remote controls. A Good Bite Is Hard to Find pictures a man with a big fish, a dog muzzled by a hand and a woman in a chin strap. Maybe the Big Idea in the three prints is about our attempts to control everything, but, in looking at them, thoughts about rat races, plastic surgery, sexual dysfunction, vanity, The Old Man and the Sea, orthodontics and heartache also jogged around my mind.

The standout painting is We Are Wild Birds, a portrait of himself and one of his pet parakeets. A beak-shaped cover masks his mouth and is tied with a string the same blue as the bird's feathers. Both stare at us with dark-eyed intensity. It's a neat double-entendre about domestication (human and animal) and communication failures, even among birds of a feather.

- Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

"Riled Life Refuge" is at the Galleries at Salt Creek through December. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. (727) 894-2653.