Sunday, July 28, 2013

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Sunday, July 14, 2013

new work: Baer whites and greens as a continued response to the edge of the world

Home now, from Iceland, for over two weeks.  The experience still buzzes inside me.  I can finally sleep through the night- my body rhythms have been reminded of what evening darkness looks and feels like- and my senses have settled their resentment, as much as they ever will, towards the oppression of humidity.  But still, Iceland buzzes.

A million tiny experiences, thousands of photographs.  My work has been permanently nudged into another space.  For now, the references, in the visual as well as the titles, reflect directly.  I understand that this direct correlation will, ultimately, fall away with time.  I'm buoyed by the knowledge that the buzz in the work will remain, and is now forever fixed in its sensibilities.  This, I think, is what a residency is for.  For new buzzes.

The work shown here was created- in a bit of a frenzy I suppose- in the two weeks since my return from Iceland.  Allowing for a couple of days of sleep when I first returned, I've been working daily.  I'm showing some of the results here, and writing just a tiny bit about them.  As a matter of course I tend to avoid writing about my work.  I used to do a great deal of it, but found I was constantly disappointed with the process...to the point where I began to question its usefulness.  It struck me as a futile attempt to understand a language using another language.  It would confuse me. I ultimately moved away from doing very much of it.  In this case, however, the profound and rapid shift my work has undergone because of the residency has me thinking that a bit of writing might help me sort it out a bit.  That, or it'll just confuse me again....yet to be determined.

The following work is coming together as series of its own, within the residency body as a whole.  Prior to leaving for Iceland, a few friends made joking comments to me about how, given where I was headed, all of my work would now be variations of white.  Of course, I knew this wouldn't be the case...Iceland in June is no longer blanketed in snow, and I don't tend to respond so literally to stimuli, anyway.  Maybe if I were in Greenland.

But, here we are: I found the white, and this newest work uses white as a jumping point.  There were snow caps on the mountains and stretches of it furrowed into the hanging valleys during the entire month, but most of the colors in the landscape were browns, blacks, greens, yellows.  White, however, came at me from another direction: the light.  The light of Iceland, at least during my stay in June, is whiter and cooler than any I have ever seen.  It makes the outdoor light here seem yellowed by comparison.  It is cool, stark, dry light...and all colors look different in it.  I found this out when a painting I had created at Baer made its way to me in my first work shipment home.  The colors, the relationships of value and hue, were completely different when viewed in the light of Massachusetts.  Not worse, not better...just different.

I started thinking more directly about the white of northern Icelandic light...and then, just about white. After all, white is never just about white, especially in paint.  To speak about cool white, one can, and should, utilize an arsenal.  

 Baer whites no.1   oil, pencil on paper   17x12"


This work on paper is the start of that exploration.  Although abstract, I realized after its completion that, above the black horizontal space, a faint dark form resembling a section of mountains was apparent; like a crest shrouded in fog or something.  That reference was almost enough for me to take it out- to work it over to erase the reference, as would be my general tendency in abstraction- but I resisted.  I'm still unclear if that was a good decision, but I want to let the process stand.

I also found that an interest in laying down dark in order to find the whites, through building.  This not only allows for a base to explore texture above it, but it also becomes my foundation for temperature...whether by harmony or contrast.  It's the idea, as well, of setting up a problem to solve: get to light by starting in the dark. 

Baer whites no.2   oil, charcoal on paper   17x12"

Similar to no.1, but with more line work, and heavier movement.  I also found blue hues in my darks. I dig that part, although blue is not the only direction in which I ultimately wish to head.

 Baer whites no.3   oil, encaustic on panel   16x40"

This piece is larger: 16x40". It is a diptych, but the panels are flush to each other.  Here, another problem set up to solve: fields of complete black (dark, dark grey actually) so absent of light that they threaten to suck any lightness from anything placed on or near them. Then, explore light.  Fun.  I like this piece a great deal.  The rhythm is interesting, the formal structure is narrative in the loosest sense.  The texture plays in and out between understanding surface and letting it have a language.  It looks back at me with a solemn, contemplative response to being here...like maybe it's a bit pissed.  In this piece, the encaustic is layered into the back, as a foundation, but still has a voice.  The piece, for me, is colorful in its whiteness.

Baer whites no.4   oil, encaustic on panel   6x30"

Here's my unsteady friendship with this piece: long horizontal spaces, in our western eye, so easily read from left to right: cause and effect, start and finish, before and since.  I both like that dynamic but also find myself wanting to break it...or at least muffle it a lot. But, I still find myself coming back to this format.  Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I really like the challenge. The black area on the left begins the dialogue with the remainder of the sections of form and space...which is probably what I like the most.  The green is the most blatant hue switch in the series to this point, and I also find that interesting.  The photo of this piece, which could be much better, still runs too blue, particularly in the whites...something I have been trying to avoid too much in the work itself.  These whites, in person, are less blue.  For me, blue wishes to speak too naturally in cool whites, so I don't want to give it any more help.  In fact, finding a cool white range while staying completely away from blues is an uphill challenge, and I like that.

Baer whites no.5   oil, encaustic on four panels   16.5x16.5" total size

Here's a better example of moving away from cool into warm, to find cool.  I love ochre yellow...it's one of my favorite warm colors. I also saw so many variations of it in the landscape in northern Iceland...rather unexpectedly.  Again, I tend to shy away from too many literal pulls from a space, so I tread softly.  However, as a counterpoint dynamic to find white, I loved using it here.  I also brought in a collaged layer of written form, buried beneath the yellow layers.  It's actually a section of a newspaper from Iceland- I thinnk it's the obit section, but I might be wrong- and was part of my packing material for shipping work home.  My relationship with direct collage has always been distant...it's something I utilize infrequently, since it can be so content-loaded from the start.  But here, I like how it works as more variations of whites and texture.  

I began this piece as a four panel horizontal...so here is a great example of how I needed, in the end, to break the left-to-right narrative structure.  The painting was struggling, and then I pulled the elements together as a grid, and it began to have a voice.

Baer greens no.1   oil, charcoal on paper   20x12"

OK, so here, obviously, I moved into a major hue shift...so much so that a new title direction was necessary.  Still here, though, the whites are the goal for me.  No real bright white to be found in this piece, but who knows where the next "green" piece will take me.  I cropped this piece twice before I found the structure it needed.

So, there it is...the Baer whites, thus far.  I'll continue to post the new work here as it is completed.