Sage Tucker-Ketcham on ‘Under the Water and Into the Woods’

There is nothing quite so spooky as plunging into dark water. Airlessness, pressure, disorientation. Alien creatures lurk in dark kelp forests, waiting to lure victims with a single bioluminescent point of light.

This is the world Sage Tucker-Ketcham explores in “Under the Water & Into the Woods,” on view at Soapbox Arts in Burlington through November 16. The new body of work is a departure for the Charlotte painter; viewers may know her earlier paintings of friendly, blocky houses in bold colors.

There are no such refuges in this show. It’s all wild and weird, the viewer an interloper in a strange, tangled landscape. The paintings explore subtle variations in hue to great effect: Tucker-Ketcham mostly sticks to deep blues and emerald greens. An occasional jolt such as the scarlet leaf in “Detail of a Thing in the Jungle” makes its own light in a dark scene.

Tucker-Ketcham hasn’t totally abandoned stylized forms — they appear here as plants with flat leaves and gracefully bent stalks. But they overlap and accumulate on the canvas, so that works such as “Wild Flower Farm” give the impression of walking into a dense field; the way the plants wave suggests the field is underwater, surrounded by a miasma of glowing green algae.

Immersive works such as the 4-by-6-foot triptych “Tree Trunk With Chandelier Vines” invite the viewer into a jungle where there is gravity but no ground. Vines drip from the darkness overhead, individual leaves lending specificity to an otherwise amorphous cloud of green.

Works such as “There’s a Full Moon Somewhere” differentiate only very subtly between plant forms in shades of midnight blue: Tucker-Ketcham captures the uncertainty of a moonless night, when it’s hard to tell if something is there or not.

One of the show’s most refreshing aspects is its loose, dripping layers of oil paint glazes and sprays. Everything feels watery and in motion, especially in works such as “What Lies Under the Lake” 1 and 2, a pair of 60-by-40-inch blue canvases at the far end of the gallery. They beautifully capture the feeling of being on the lake floor, particles falling like snow and partially obscuring the deep, dark scene ahead.

After seeing the exhibition, this reporter spoke with Tucker-Ketcham in her tiny space upstairs from Soapbox Arts — one she’s moving out of soon to a much larger South End studio.

How did you come to this work?

I originally was an abstract painter and made large abstract paintings using house paint and boat resin. I got really into the chemistry of it, the mixing, all that fun stuff — and then that got really gross.

I broke my foot and couldn’t walk for about six months. I ended up regrouping, getting grounded, and started painting with oil. That was about eight years ago. I painted little house paintings and landscapes, slowly getting bigger and bigger. And then about two years ago, I started painting grass.

They were still pretty tight, and then I thought, I miss being messy. So then I started pulling out my old tricks: I make my own sprays; I work on the ground. I just kind of loosened up again, which felt really great: to have fun again, because I got so tight with oil paint. Now I’m letting the process lead the painting.

Tell me about the watery, woodsy theme.

I look at the lake all the time. Under the water is this fascinating thing: I realized there’s woods under the water, and there’s water in the woods. I went to the rainforest last year in Costa Rica. I was literally in the forest but surrounded by water. It was all kind of together. The theme for the show just came to me one day: I’m going under the water, but I’m going into the woods. So it’s this experience of the balance of the water and the woods — both need each other to exist.

It seems like it’s a scary place but maybe also a comforting place. Is that how you think of it?

Totally! I started painting these jungle paintings last year, and then we just decided to go to Costa Rica. A friend said, “The jungle is so dangerous but can give you life.” I had never even thought of it that way — but now I’m thinking that all the time. The process that I’m doing again is allowing for those layers of experience, without protecting or covering it up too much. It’s letting the dark scariness occur, while also continuing to keep painting it and bringing it to life.

In some of the paintings, there’s very little difference in tonality between the shades of dark blue. You really have to be present with the painting, instead of seeing it in a photograph.

Yes. They’re hard to photograph. But if you want to spend time with it, there’s a lot you can dive into. My older work was much more graphic, and I think I was trying to make a pretty picture more. Now, I’m making the picture and then if you want to spend time with it, you can find what you want to inside of it. I feel like they do need to be experienced, more than just seen as a flat image.

The paintings in the show are mainly green and blue — but here’s a red one! What’s that about?

I did a big red one, and it happened to sell right away. Red can be really challenging for people. It was during those crazy fires, a year and a half ago, and everything looked pink. That’s what I was thinking, and then people read other meanings into it — I was like, Sure, I guess maybe it means femininity, I don’t know. But I actually was thinking about the color, because I’m a color person. I was thinking about the colors that red produces: all the different shades of red in our atmosphere.

There’s a lot in the natural world that’s somewhere between red and green, or weirdly both, that we don’t think of as red.

I’m so grateful that I get to see those things. I focus a lot on looking. I’m pretty quiet — I just like to look at things and think, What can I see? How many colors are in that thing? The red is probably being completely induced by fall and seeing all these crazy red leaves out there.

Are titles important to you?

No, I think the work should say its thing on its own. Because I feel like I enter my work as a color person, the meaning and the depth of it is really up to the viewer. I can analyze my work after, but I’m not trying to say much. I think that’s the beauty of art: It is what comes out of it. It unveils itself as it goes.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.

This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.

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