This is a wonderful review of my book Pulling Weeds from a Cactus Garden -Life is full of pricks by the talented writer and reviewer of books and films, Jeffrey D. Keeten.
Recently, he's contributed to a collection of scary, suspenseful and weird short stories, prose and poems along with a group of other writers titled, Halloween Party '21, (available on Amazon).
I am flattered and inspired by his insight and the parallels he draws to other artists.
The review is here:
When Nathalie Tierce first approached me about reading her book, I thought to myself, I’m not an art critic, nor an expert on poetic prose, and haven’t read a kid’s book (This is not a kid’s book, so my reservations in that regard were completely erroneous) in many decades. My mind was swimming with all the reasons why I was the wrong reviewer for her book. Instead of sending her my standard thanks for thinking of me but… email response, I decided to go visit her website. I’d share that address right now, but I don’t want to lose you quite yet from my review because I know, like me, you will be spending a good hour flipping through her gallery, and you would be so bedazzled by the raw power of her paintings that you would forget all about my attempts to explain why I like Nathalie’s paintings so much.
Check out this little gem from R. Crumb about Tierce’s work: ”You are a genuine visionary artist with a direct line to your subconscious.” And what a marvelous subconscious it is!
I first discovered R. Crumb when I bought the R. Crumb illustrated edition of The Monkey Wrench Gang. This prompted me to search for more examples of his art, and I was soon ogling his Amazonian women and sometimes gasping with pleasure at his flagrantly deviant, but honest, art. (I once called a rather impressive looking waitress working in an Oklahoma bar in Bricktown R. Crumbesque. It was truly as if she’d stepped straight out of the lurid mind of Crumb.) I could see how Crumb, after perusing Nathalie’s art, recognized a fellow artist who is genuinely expressing her truest feelings through her art.
This book was inspired by Aesop’s Fables, but I couldn’t help thinking about the Brothers Grimm, especially before the brothers sanitized their folk tales for children. Even after being censored, those tales have gruesome and grotesque moments that continue to give children and adults nightmares and daylight shudders. I found Tierce’s work to be deliciously horrid and, at moments, wonderfully torrid.
Tierce worked on these paintings for two years, and during that time, as she said in her forward, “the world witnessed the most bizarre spectacle of politics.”She went on to say: ”Being in lock-down for Covid-19 made people examine disturbing, deeper currents running through our society in the U.S. that we were otherwise too distracted to scrutinize.”
We are living in a post-truth world, and I miss the world that existed before. It wasn’t perfect, but at least we could disagree about things and still be friends. Now, we are bludgeoned with information, some of it true, some of it completely false, and most of it is somewhere in the middle. We have been segmented into two Americas. Each of those segments believes the other half to be batshit crazy.
Tierce further stated in the introduction, ”The symbolism that developed in those works came from the turbulence, fear, and confusion we were experiencing and trying to wade our way through.”
Art provides us with a chance for self-reflection, and as you peruse Pulling Weeds from a Cactus Garden, you will find, as I did, that what I need in my life is more flights of fancy. The paintings in this book are playful and humorous, but also speckled with thorny truths. They are the ticklish parts of our imagination and what is accepted as reality brought together in a pleasing mixture to evoke realizations that remind the gazer of the things we used to be afraid of, the things we should be afraid of, and also the things we should still try to cherish.
“‘The drool on your chin tells me you're not listening.’ --- The Lamb and the Wolf Aesop’s Fables.” For me, this sentence sums up the last few years. We quit listening to each other. We quit caring about one another. The wolves have been turned loose in all of us, and we are a less kind society. Lambs, optimists, proffered kindness are all seen as naive. Toothy ruthlessness has run rampant. It isn’t about who let the dogs loose, but who let loose the werewolves?
Tierce’s paintings are visually amazing, and the longer you peer into them, the more you will see, so you will enjoy these paintings on a multitude of levels. I even turned each painting upside down and saw even more. That is a trick I learned from my professor in college while taking a survey class on art.
I see some Picasso in her horses, some Stephen King in her clown, a bit of Cortés in her skeleton, Jeff Goldblum in her southern belle, a smidge of Ralph Steadman lurking around the edges of many of her paintings, but in the end, these are what will be known as vintage Nathalie Tierce art.
You will look at these pictures and see your own marvelous things.
If you need a chuckle and a shudder in equal measure, then this book will give you exactly what you are looking for. This book is preceded by a book called Fairy Tale Remnants that looks fabulous as well. I will also be reviewing that book in the very near future. For that slightly quirky person in your life who is almost impossible to buy for, these books will make a perfect Christmas/birthday gift.
Nathalie Tierce provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
