Where the paintings came from
I have two paintings hanging in the Pleiades Gallery, (Landmark Arts Building 547 West 27th St Suite 304 NY, NY 10001, between 10 an 11th Ave) through February 16, 2024.
This blog talks about how these paintings came about, and my perception.
In January 2023 I had a large solo show in Wilmington. I removed all 10 paintings of the previous (“Breathing” ) series from my studio. I was also showing pieces that I had painted earlier, which I thought were seminal to the “Breathing” series.
Here I was, with a vacant studio and a feeling similar to that when I am in a foreign country of being untethered. Have you experienced that? The language is different, the climate is not what you are used to, the food tastes different, the people are unrecognizable, the buildings, the colors all around you, the slant of the sun….all contribute to a feeling that you are not sure of where you stand.
Well that was me in my own studio. I needed to paint but did not know where to begin.
I always approach each painting as an individual painting, but in some cases, as in the breathing series, where the underlying break up of space was approximately the same, there is a thread between one painting and the others in the series. With each painting I was moving away from what I had found in the earlier paintings. In working, I varied some aspect relied upon in the previous, changing brush strokes, tools, colors. Still I always moved toward a similar objective: light emanating from lack of light, no horizon line, no references to the world around us except what color and light can convey. With each painting I took what I’d learned from the previous and kept pushing on.
That series was complete. I needed to begin afresh. As I came into the empty studio, I had no real plans for what the paintings would look like but I knew that I needed to see with new eyes. I started with a different size and shape of canvas, smaller canvases (30 x 30”) and square not rectangular, establishing a new field of play, or battlefield as it were. .
I picked colors and began.
In order to harness the potential of each piece, I took the time to understand the painting as it developed. As in the series just completed, I began with an acrylic underpainting and then use a variety of tools, such as palette knives, brushes, and even my fingers, to layer oil paint and pigment to create texture and depth. I focused on each piece individually, with nothing to push away from and no concept of where I was headed.
I worked on each painting until there was nothing left to say.
Carrying Unfinished Stories Oil on Canvas 30 x 30”
The painting pasted above puzzled me when I had finished with it, it was unlike any painting I have ever seen or made. I knew it was finished but had no judgement as to quality. I took some pictures and posted to Instagram and Facebook. I was encouraged when artists I know and respect commented with praise.
Now, having shown this painting and listened to the responses of viewers, I see how there seems to be a horizon line. It seems to be a cityscape with light emanating between buildings. The aqua color, while full of lightness and air reads as buildings weighing down what is beneath. The reading suddenly shifts and one sees the same lightness and air as sky, above an underworld that is full of life. The magenta stripe stabilizes the entire painting.
But then, I only knew that I had to paint, to find my way. So, I began the next painting.
The second painting hung at Pleiades was not the next painting completed but the third. Even as I finished the third, all three individual paintings seemed totally unrelated to one another.
This one has so much movement, pushing in every direction around a quiet solid mass.
Resting Oil on Canvas 30 x 30 “
Many months later, I saw similarities in the colors used. Then I saw how they related to each other. Hung next to each other they seem to be having a discussion about stasis.
On the wall at the Pleiades Gallery
Studio work, like life, is a matter of picking up and starting over with no assurances, no obvious path to follow, grasping for connections where none are easily found. As we put one foot in front of the other we cannot see how one decision influences the next.
It is only in stepping outside the activity, looking back over time, that we can see, there was a path. Then we see how what seemed like flailing around at the time, is always part of a larger pattern. Every action taken is a preparation for what follows.