Mary Ann Aitken, "Figure in Red Room"
August 17, 2018
Mary Ann Aitken, Figure in Red Room, 1985-1986.
In Figure in Red Room, by Mary Ann Aitken, the protagonist stands in the center of the space, alone and still in a terrain of heavy oil paint. While the entire canvas is laden red, this lone figure beams white while the intensity of the texture distorts their shape, making their contour cloudy as if being conceived in a fuzzy memory or a dissolving dream. Who is this person? Are they real, or imagined? Is it the artist herself or someone else? At 26 x 26 inches, the square format of this painting is typical of Aitken’s oeuvre, as well as her fascination with materiality and beauty in the every day seemingly mundane. Figure in Red Room took Aitken about a year to complete.
During her lifetime, Mary Ann Aitken took more pleasure in creating than she did in exhibiting. While working on her BA and later her MA in Art Therapy around the same time as the Cass Corridor movement in Detroit, Aitken worked humbly in her studio, not exhibiting often. She continued in this way when she moved to Brooklyn to work as an Art Therapist. When Aitken passed in 2012, she left resources for her art to be shared with the world. In 2013, What Pipeline gallery in Detroit featured Aitken’s early works in Black Abstract. The solo show focused on her art from a significant period of her life, 1983-1989, the same period in which Figure in Red Room had been created. Her art caught the attention of Tara Downs, the co-founder of Tomorrow Gallery in Toronto. Downs quickly became attracted to Aitken’s emphasis on materiality, and later featured her in one of Tomorrow Gallery’s first few New York shows, Eternal September.
Figure in Red Room was featured in Gallery Project’s (Ann Arbor) 2008 exhibition, Spirit, a group show curated by Aitken’s longtime friend and fellow Detroit artist, Ed Fraga. Aitken shortly after gifted it to the Wayne State University Art Collection.
Written by Danielle Cervera Bidigare