"Bryn Mawr" An Artists book

These abstract landscape paintings-on-paper were completed in 1994.  They never made it to mats and frames so binding them into a book seemed a good presentation.  The geometric designs bring everything up to date with the current portfolio.  Designs are all based on hexagons, and are incised into the painting's surface, then peeled off to reveal clean white lines.  

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.  I believe this and extend it to all communication, including visual art.  The random techniques of Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism express directly the joie de vivre abundant within me by the Holy Spirit.  

However, in recent pieces imagery is reduced to panels of texture, bridging into a gritty form of Minimalism.  Whether chunky or slick, the materials are being emphasized and are more expressive in spite of the paintings increasingly stoic forms. 

I edit heavily.   I pile on paint and thickly textural elements like leaves, grasses or bark.  The latest works feature hay from my dairy barn studio and cat tails gathered from marshes in upstate New York.  I use local elements as a way of assimilating my environment and regional culture. 

After embedding these elements into the paint I scrape off what I can.  Of what remains, I isolate the lines and shapes that are the essence of the chaotic underpainting.  The experience and process of this discovery motivates my creative urge.  I look for surprise in materials, process and imagery, as surprise is the beginning of delight!

Here's the latest!

 

"Towards Disappearing" A Painting by Sam Francis, 1957, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 I really love this painting!  I’ve never seen it before, and figured it was by Helen Frankenthaler.  The wash that was under the opaque brushwork looked like stains seeping out from the heavier paint.  I only associate that effect with Frankenthaler, but all that open space…the brushwork relative to the size of the painting was underscaled, but the composition—its critical groupings of shapes, brushwork, and spatters was so unusual! 

 

What does it take for a painting to strike you as weird? “Towards Disappearing” by Sam Francis is very pleasing in its sparseness, but perhaps the placement of its parts is not entirely precise—everything is roughed in by the transparent blue wash, then brushed over with heavier paint; but the unusual balance, particularly from top to bottom wins. 

The blobs on either edge of the canvas are perhaps too obvious in stretching the image to its full margin, but I refuse to belabor this point because of the sweetness of the main body. 

I find it easy to simply report the basics:  to look at the technique and process, believing that this tells about the painting.  "Towards Disappearing" illustrates the concept of a work being greater than the sum of its parts. 

This painting is more than the brushstrokes and qualities of the material.  It is more than Francis’ colors--they seem to be swallowed up by white canvas and then appear upon closer inspection; it is more than the many fine spatters of thrown liquid paint.  Technique doesn’t define this curious imagery.

The museum notes mention the artist’s travels to Paris and his encounter with Japanese art, and point out the simplicity of expression, the asymmetrical division of the space, the calligraphic quality of the brushwork and identity of the image.  This begins to open a door onto the work, but it is a genuinely weird painting. 

In Francis' painting the asymmetry, paint handling, the liquidity of the paint are its subject.  Its wash, drips/runs and fine splatters speak so to liquid characteristics—no impasto or thick film, no structure. 

And it doesn’t look like water lilies, birds, or anything--It's just a painting, not a painting of something.  Success!

For more on Sam Francis:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Francis