The Amplitude of Time: 2005

Friday, November 25, 2005

"Birthday"

"Birthday" 2005

28" by 60"
Acrylic on Canvas

This acrylic piece, with it's central spatial compression of the figurative marks, is the direct antecedent of the "Population" painting at top.

This was part of pushing the figurative references to the absolute edge of disappearance, and the landscape reference, as in many of the works in the last two years, is a nearly empty, imaginary space - the light is simply an actor, not a lamp or a sun, or even a specific source.

Collection of Green and Yalowitz, Seattle

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Afterimage: Sara

Afterimage: Sara
2005
65" by 48" o/c

A 2005 work, just recently reworked significantly (this is the older image), using the same principle of spun off mark from the figure. The model is again Sara Graves - you should be able to suss out the three primary poses.

The view is off my studio in Ballard; the specific details are unresolved to emphasize the complex graphic interaction of the gestural and U- shaped marks spinning around the figure "centers."

There is much greater variation in the opacity and precision of the marks - they are gestural in origin but are more carefully resolved; one way to think of these might be a Dekooning with all the classical rules of painting spatiality back in place.

This painting was begun rather casually, but the complexity of the interaction of the marks nearly overwhelmed me as I worked to complete it. The marks have become both spatial and descriptive, gestural and highly specific. It takes me about half an hour to reaquaint myself with the painting before I can actually work on it.

Two Before Windows
90" by 66" o/c
2002 (reworked 2005)

Exhibited originally at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle for my 2002 MFA, I refined this painting heavily this summer, completely reworking the face and upper torso, opening new "fissures" of spatial area, and cleaning up the large vertical marks.

This is the only one of my recent painting to include a "complete" figure, with the model's head totally solid; the suggestion is that as as time passed, only her face solidified in the memory, and the shapes of the room and her body spin off exist in a more fluid temporal space.

A lot of my time is spent stitching abstract planes, figurative marks, and observational memory into a believable if non-specific space. I depend on painting tools to form their own rooms and spaces and even people in a kind of response to observed reality, rather than a slavish visual mimesis.

Available.

Pink Marks of Absence
24" by 48" o/c 2001-2005

This is actually my first painting (from graduate school at UW- Seattle ) involving the style of figurative marks in a perspectival space, and was heavily reworked in the last two months. Only small parts of a pink field from the original show through; it was only this year that I recognized the method to complete it.

Available.

Arctic #2, Oil/panel 24" by 48" 2005

Exhibited recently at the Pratt Museum in Alaska, in a tribute exhibition to artist Alex Combs, a pioneer of abstraction and expression in the Last Frontier, a long-time friend of my family whose work contributed to my ambitions as an artist.

The imagined sea-ice surface, and the darks of the ocean, are highly textured and fairly rich, and the figurative marks are reduced to tiny traces.

Collection of the Artist.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

This is an installation style view of an untitled wire and acrylic paint sculpture in fron of Sara #9. The sculpture is about 70" high and fully dimensional.

The relationship between the two is striking- the gestures and colors of the sculpture fold almost seamlessly into the painting, which was something of a surprise to me. as this was not directly planned.

Sara #9 was originally sourced from the observed figure, in this case my friend and frequent model Sara Graves, while the sculpture was my first large scale attempt to build a sculpture as a painting object. (An interview with me on this subject is located at Liquitex.com, who were rather thrilled at the 3-d use of heavy-body acrylic, in large quantities!)