Painting a Sense of Place

acrylic/canvas(30"x40") acrylic/canvas (30"x40")

acrylic/canvas (40" x 30")

My investigations of place have recently intersected with interest in notions that many realities co-exist simultaneously; both abstract and concrete. Realities of circular instead of linear time, the possibility of actually locating dark matter

(http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dark_matter.html)

and the discovery of chaos theories (http://www.around.com/chaos.html)

have informed my practice.

I am working from a variety of sources to develop a space which is the locus of all the opposites we experience as daily life; flat and deep, linear and circular, reality and fantasy. When I construct an image I am using both photographic resources as well as gestural mark making techniques. I have used Photoshop to alter and simplify photos which are then combined with a hand drawn line and transferred to the canvas. I am experimenting with color to both justify as well as decry accepted color theories, which seem to have their desired effects only within groups schooled in such color theory. These images begin with photographs of urban architecture. I often refer to art historical imagery incorporating figure or place.

Summer Residency 2010 VSC

Barbara White Studios Building

The Red Mill - Campus Center: dinning room, residents' lounge, galleries, admin. offices

July 2010 at VSC (Vermont Studio Center)
http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/

What a productive summer! Full of awesome surprises, rich experiences and gifted individuals, it was a July that will go on in my own personal history as an “ah ha” moment! Eureka! With the support of time and resources provided by the Center, I was able to negotiate some of my creative ambiguities. This focused situation although brief, allowed me to develop in leaps and bounds. Visiting critics: Frances Barth and Jean Blackburn, along with some block-buster co-residents continually fed the painting monster within me. Vermont Studio Center occupies a 30+ building very rural campus along the picturesque Gihon River in Johnson, Vermont. I began most mornings with other residents for an hour of Tai Chi in one of the lush gardens maintained by the Center. Cai Xi Silver, a resident and painter led each session. With little distractions, and meals provided, producing art, though it is never an easy task, suddenly became modus opperandi. My second floor, sun-filled corner studio in the Barbara White Building was my lair to wrestle the creative beast and finally wring about 10 (mostly incomplete) paintings by month’s end; a deluge of investigation transferred to my home studio.