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Annie Lapin: An Intimate Paintbrush

In looking at Andrea Mantegna’s paintings, the modernist writer and art collector Gertrude Stein announced, “I liked Mantegna then because he made me realize that white is a colour, and in a way he made me feel something about which oil paintings were that prepared me for what was to come later.” The push of white across a canvas often comes across unexpectedly, and remains a lark in works by painters lauded for their dramatic use of color; deep pine-green, fuchsia and persimmon orange, dirt brown—these colors have a way of claiming space, of commanding attention. Among the work of present-day artists, the oil paintings of Annie Lapin allow white to have its say—and the results are startling. White is, as Gertrude Stein would say, “a colour,” and Lapin’s canvases allow it to make up for lost time. Take, for example, her work titled The Conversation (2007), in which two figures robed in shimmering red tuck back into a leafy woodland; here, white comes through like a swath, like a tear in the linen upon which it is painted. Conversely, The Glory Shapey Thing (2011) enlists white for figurative purposes, portraying something like a brief sketch of a baby lamb’s awkward posture. The white does not cede to color but emerges as a skeletal presence, an anatomy that sustains and subdues all of the liveliness on the canvas. A yellow pulse runs straight up the canvas, serving as a vibrant shock as it comes up from the low angle to the docile figure just balanced at the center of the canvas. The work of Annie Lapin is justifiably admired by critics for its energy; indeed, the pace runs from a formidable clip to a frenetic whirl. The push and pull at play in the composition provides a locomotive thrust. But part of the pleasure of looking at these