Thelma Appel The Fool, 2009

Thelma Appel

The Fool, 2009

Acrylic on Canvas

Signed, titled and dated by Thelma Appel on the back

Frame included

Signed, titled and dated by Thelma Appel on the back

Measurements:
Frame:
50 x 62 x 3 inches
Artwork:
48 x 60 x 1

This unique, signed painting was exhibited in the exhibition "Thelma Appel: Milestones" at the Marie Louise Trichet Art Gallery, Wisdom House, Litchfield, CT, Fall, 2017. "The Fool" is part of Thelma Appel's original series of large paintings based upon the Major Arcana of the Tarot Deck, representing archetypes of human experience and characters - from a Kabbalistic perspective. Here, Appel re-imagines the archetypal "FOOL" of the Tarot, arguably one of the most misunderstood images. He is set against a plush, exquisite nightscape - setting about a journey at night and in the dark - but illuminated by the moon, perhaps representing one's imagination. According to Keen, "The Fool's impractical clothing, chosen for its fashionable sense, is not the best choice for the mountain road on which he is walking. Everything about this journey seems to be impractical. He is more interested in the flowers and the exhilarating walk than in the possible disastrous fall that may await at the next step. He did not bring a watchdog, he brought a small companion valued for its appearance and yet this is the only thing that seems to be saving him from himself... The Fool remains the most controversial card in the Tarot deck. It is the only card that has a zero on it; the other cards all adhere to the Roman numeral system. The origin of The Fool remains a mystery, with some translations of this card insisting that it is inherently a negative connotation and is more properly labeled "The Idiot." Other research reveals the card's origin as "Troubadour," an inspired aesthete traveling a long distance to entertain at the court of a king in some far off land. There can be no doubt, though about the power of the zero, historically. .... The Fool is a powerful card because its possibilities all start in nothingness and reach into infinity."

Combining her formal background in illustration, abstraction, landscape, figuration, and her interest in mysticism, spirituality and Kabbalah - Appel creates a uniquely original interpretation of the ages old Tarot deck, and is probably one of the only contemporary fine artists to undertake such an ambitious project.

Thelma Appel is a beloved landscape and abstract painter who has been working and teaching for more than six decades. She was raised in Darjeeling, India and educated in London, England, at St. Martin's School of Art (now Central St. Martins) and Hornsey College of Art before emigrating to the United States in the 1960s. Now in her 80s, her work is being re-discovered by a new generation of collectors and curators. Most recently, she was awarded "Most Expressive" by the Mattatuck Museum for her work in the invitational exhibition "The Art of Experience". Another painting of Appel's, "Exodus by Moonlight" (about refugees) was included in an exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including the Bennington Museum, the Berkshire Museum in North Adams, Mass., the Children's Museum of the Arts in New York City, the Mattatuck Museum, the Brattleboro Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont, the University of Pennsylvania Fine Arts Gallery - and seen on the A & E Television Series "The Way Home." In the 1980s, she was represented by the renowned Jill Kornblee Gallery on West 57th Street, and later Fischbach Gallery - (at the time the gallery of record for Alex Katz and other representational artist), and Appel's works were acquired by many private and public collections. She is also a longtime art teacher, having taught drawing at Parsons School of Design, painting at Southern Vermont College and at the University of Connecticut. In 1974 she was awarded a YADDO Fellowship, and in 1975, Thelma Appel, along with the painter Carol Haerer, co-founded the Bennington College Summer Painting Workshop, where many distinguished painters of the day, both abstract and representational, conducted master classes. Among them were Neil Welliver, John Button, Alice Neel, Larry Poons, Friedel Dzubas, Stanley Boxer, Elizabeth Murray and Doug Ohlson – a program that continued until 1980.

Appel became known primarily for her paint-soaked brush strokes on large canvases that sought to recreate the energy, color and immediacy of the landscapes. In a recent documentary interview, the artist explained why she considers herself a Romantic landscape painter: "Not recording mimetically what lay before me, but trying to express the excitement I felt in response to nature by using paint-soaked brush strokes on a large canvas wherein the over-lapping layered strokes of color were metaphors for the contiguities found in nature. My early paintings sought to recreate the energy, color and immediacy of the landscapes... o convey a more raw "painterly" feeling within the image, rather than recording a particular scene or looking on from a distance. "