Commentary

To see is God given. To see well is a matter of luck and love. Kullberg is one of the lucky loved ones. She was formally introduced to the world of shape and color at an early age by her guru of sight: her deaf mother. It is said that God compensates His children for the gifts He takes away. In her mother's case, He granted sensitivity to light, color, and space in exchange for a world of silence. Kullberg's mother encouraged, no, insisted, that Kullberg take hard and conscious looks at her world.

This had a profound effect on Kullberg's work. Never mind that Kullberg was (once again) lucky to grow up in Riverside surrounded by the vision of Frederick Law Olmstead who never saw a right angle he liked.

Here's a spot quiz: Count the right angles in Kullberg's work. She is all curves and color. Despite her deceptively peaceful style, I detect the echoes of tornadoes. Make square out of your thumb and finger and zero in on portions of Kullberg's paintings. You'll see a biomorphic quality that she learned from the great landscape architect who fought to tame the shores of the Des Plaines River in the volatile Midwestern climate.

Looking at Kullberg's work I can't help but think of another very different artist. Michael D. Marshall, Atrium Gallery, teaches at the University of Hawaii. Follow the link and at first you'll think that their work is nothing alike. His paintings are huge and his media is mixed. Kullberg sticks to oil and watercolor and seldom strays from a small format. She works as small as 5" by 7". His works starts with a series of gestures. But like Kullberg, his drawings are often expressed through a build-up of marks, while the motifs are often based on observations taken from nature or his environment. In Marshall's paintings there is apparent chaos with underlying precision. In Kullberg's case it is the precision that jumps out at the viewer but that precision exists only to control an obsession with motion. That they are both accomplished draftsman is clear.

Two artists starting from the same place come to very different ends. In his case, "descriptive representation gives way to a lyric sense of visual movement and order" where descriptive representation works just fine for Kullberg.

It is not surprising to me to learn they were both nurtured by the same vast and changeable Midwestern sky that let us know on a daily basis that everything and anything is possible. And I 'll bet folding money that they are the only working artists who were reared by deaf contemporaries in Chicago's fevered mid-century. Kullberg's father was a printer and Marshall's father was a graphic artist. Curiously, neither lives within a thousand of miles of that landscape today. It just goes to show you that you can take an artist out of the sky but you can't take the sky out of the artist.

Their parents could not hear but they could see and they shared that gift with their children. Acute and educated vision can be a rock in the storm of time, space and sorrow.

Catching a Kullberg is tricky. She hates to sell her paintings. In fact, she tracks of the ownership of each of her creations over time. She has an Excel sheet to prove it. It takes a lot of effort to monitor these rascals, which may be why she has no paintings available to buy.

--J.R. Brandstrader has written for Barrons and CBS Radio