The Heart of Life: Paintings by Daphyne Altman and Portia Lyde

This exhibition opened March 16, 2007 and will continue through April 7.  It represents the accumulated wealth of life and art experiences of two amazing women,

Daphyne Altman and Portia Lyde.

"Accumulated Riches," below, is an essay written by Dolores Mitchell on this exhibit.  Versions of it were published in the March issue of Inside/Out and The Lotus Guide, two local Chico periodicals:

Elder artists Daphyne Altman and Portia Lyde each brighten Chico lives with vibrant paintings that draw upon seventy years of art and life experiences. They have lived through and assimilated such major 20th century art movements as cubism, expressionism, abstract expressionism and Pop art.  Non-western arts have  also nourished their creativity.  Altman has lived in the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, India and Mexico, and Lyde has spent decades of summers in The Bahamas.  This winter their passionate art has warmed the walls of Zucchini and Vine (Lyde) and Vagabond Rose (Altman). 

A joint Altman and Lyde exhibit, "The Heart of Life," runs at Avenue 9 Gallery from March l6 through April 7.  The title expresses the reverence with which these women regard every day experiences. Lyde's oil painting "Big Fish" celebrates the pleasures of the table.  Fish with iridescent scales, just caught from the blue Caribbean of the Bahamas, are to be seasoned with zesty lemons and peppers.  Our eyes feast on spicy cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and viridian green--applied with great gusto.  Bon appetit!

Altman, inspired by the near death experience of a heart attack, has painted a series of canvases that celebrate human organs, including the heart, lungs, and kidneys. Like Leonardo, an artist she admires, Altman marvels at the beauty of our internal engineering. She says: "My paintings are stylized and whimsical.  I wanted to show the beauty of these organs. Because they are inside us and we don't see them they can frighten us.  TV and movies show such gory pictures of inner bodies.  I've included flowers and birds in my paintings of organs to show connections between all parts of life."  In her "Heart Lung" painting, Altman brings out correspondences between branching trees and the lung's air-ducts and blood vessels.  The image pulses with the hot colors of life.  

Lyde and Altman share strikingly similar patterns of life. As children, both knew they wanted to be artists.  After high school, college art study stimulated their talents.  Careers with the military followed by marriage and the raising of children broadened their experiences.

During World War II, Lyde, who had been a photographer for Oakland's Post Enquirer, entered Naval service for the Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington D.C.  It was her responsibility to categorize combat photos from all over the world.  She recalls seeing many horrific images during those years, as well as hopeful ones as from the l945 Yalta Conference between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. 

Lyde's drive to create art remained strong in these years. She says: "At the Modern Museum in New York I saw a Van Gogh--its colors glowed like electric lights and the paintings around it sank back into the wall.  I wanted to use colors boldly like that!"  After military service, Lyde married and settled with her husband, a district attorney, in Oroville where they raised two children.  The couple built a vacation home in the Bahamas where Lyde encountered lush vegetation, coral reefs and pink and white sands. She says: "There was a period in my life where I  painted mainly in tones of black, but the tropical colors of the Bahamas changed that. I entered a different space when I painted there, always searching for the most dynamic relationship between colors."

During World War II, Altman, after art study in Sacramento, worked for the Quartermaster Depot in Oakland, and then for the War Department Agency in the Philippines.  After marriage, she traveled with her husband, who was with The Voice of America, to Saudi Arabia and India.  The intricate patterns and brilliant colors of local fabrics and mosaics affected her art.   Through the decades, creating art with and for her children and grandchildren stimulated Altman's irrepressible sense of humor.  A multi-talented artist, she practices painting, glass making, mosaics, ceramics and fiber art, and has designed costumes and sets for Chico theater productions.  Of her doll series she says: "As I work, a doll takes on a persona that is often not what I originally intended.  It seems to have a spirit of its own."

The great Spanish painter Goya inscribed a self-portrait at age 80 with the words "always learning"--that applies to Altman and Lyde as well.  They have used experiences of war, family life, illness and recovery to create art that speaks with rare joyousness of the human condition.