"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.  

"The Aesthetic Persist"

 Art is a long strange trip.  Pay attention because sometimes it doubles back on itself.

Art leapt forward after nearly 50 drawings in the surrealist “Emergent Image” series.  Number 48 had potential to go further....

Investigation was required. A rendering of the original image streamlined its edges and accentuated the lovely central black shape.  The new drawing looked like a lovely mid-century ceramic sculpture.  

Check out those edges!

This idea ran its course after a few iterations and it was time to return to the series work with so-so results.  But the potential of the "Open Vessel" drawing...time to return for another rendering. 

(bean emergent image)

Flushing out those curves a little and working out the shading…but so what?  Hmm...What if the edges changed?  Another rendering.  Even worse. 

(first two rendering)

But then that wrinkle pattern itself was more interesting than the original shape.  What if the veins were included?  Oh YES.

What if the image were mirrored like a Rorschach print?  Aha.  From nearly 4 dozen random automatic styled drawings into meticulously rendered, highly ordered, intentional imagery.  Some with veins.

Ooh, surprise! Relates to artwork from the early 1980’s, who would suspect?

 

                               Persistent aesthetic!

https://jtnwdc.wixsite.com/jamesthatcherarts

  

Biography as Art Practice

In 1982, one of my professors at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, Washington, DC (yes, that Corcoran) said that you could sweep the studio floor and put it into the artwork I was making. 

 

"The Spirit of Myth", 2004, 88" x 66", Latex Enamel, dirt, kitty litter, & wood chips on canvas
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

It was 15 years before I actually did that, but the essence of the comment was about making artwork that used the stuff of life as a medium.  This concept has led me to embed tree branches, bark, and leaves, or hay in paint, and employ parts and processes from a 24-year career as a cabinet maker into decades of artwork.  

"Chiaroscuro", 2015-18, 48" x 72", Latex enamel, hay, bulrushes, kitty litter
on plywood panel.  James Thatcher  copyright  2018

Detail, "Chiaroscuro", 2018, latex enamel, hay, bulrushes, kitty litter on plywood panel.

Installation view, 2014-18, acrylic on canvas.

But the 2008 financial crisis forced a retirement from cabinet making and changed everything.  I joined the staff of a missions-based ministry that I’d been volunteering with in southern Appalachia.  We did mission day trips every week, where I experienced the necessity, the power, and the joy of serving “the least of these.”

Now, 10 years later, I have reconnected with that passion as a volunteer for the United Community Action Network (UCAN) food bank in Roseburg, Oregon.  This portfolio is based on that volunteer work, both emotionally and by “using the stuff of it” as a medium.

  

"Portrait Box", one of 4 sides, 2018, 20" x 16" x 10",
Black & white gesso, latex paint on banana box.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

"Portrait Box Rotation", 2018, Black & white gesso, latex paint on banana box.

"Food Insecurity", 2018, 96" x 80", Black gesso & latex paint
on deconstructed banana boxes, stapled to loading pallets.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

The food distribution system, from the Oregon Food Bank in Portland, to UCAN, to the food pantries and recipients in Douglas County, relies on banana boxes as carriers.  As such, banana boxes are the natural choice for a substrate, along with loading pallets, to depict issues of food insecurity.

Proposed Installation, 24 units, 20" x 16" x 10"
Black & white gesso, latex paint on banana boxes
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

This portfolio speaks of my personal history in exploring art materials, of hands-on ministry, of experience in food distribution, and passion for confronting food insecurity. 

"The Light Shines Through Our Imperfections", 2018, 40" x 48"
Black & white gesso,latex paint on deconstructed banana boxes,
stapled to loading pallet, with two florescent lights.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

My biography is reflected directly in my art practice.

http://jtnwdc.wixsite.com/jamesthatcherarts

Focus Project

I’m making thirty identical paintings.  They're each 8” x 10” and modeled after a study of a blue gradient Tree of Life hexagon.  

"Transformation Hexagon"  ©  2015

This image's step-by-step process make it a natural choice for this sort of project.  Focusing on the same shape, same colors, same process, technique and size will yield the same result X 30.

This is the most controversial assignment given by our faculty at the Corcoran College of Art + Design (Washington, DC, 1980’s). However, it was given after 2 months of free range creativity. Nobody mentioned it, but the piles of artwork generated during that first stage were about discovering our modus operandi and ONE image.  

A piece that summed up the range of our unfettered production; our free association, lateral thinking, uninhibited choices in art making that sidestepped our fault-finding, self-filtering, uptight, judgmental fearful selves.

Duplicating that one piece thirty times through the Focus Project was an exercise in discipline and an example of what to do when you found that idea worth pursuing.

Sometimes logistics becomes sculpture.

We do an awful lot of artwork in a lifetime.  We produce drawings and sketches, and ideas that take over our imaginations.  We rush on to generate more ideas, sketches, and proposals…. 

And then what--continue the search for “the next big thing”?  Ugh….

Let’s stay with that brilliant, reduced idea.  Why discard it in the search for another?  They're worth holding onto.  When you find it, focus.  

A focus project brings a meditation on an image, finding out all that it holds and in the process of re-iteration controlled progress reveals itself.  

Side work produced during the current Focus Project.

Thinking becomes ordered, step-by-step instead of random.  Your body of work becomes cohesive and its coherence is evident.  Clarity becomes a trait of your artwork and process.  The directions you take become manageable choices that your clients and fan base follow as well.

Dare to impose a little discipline into the mix.  Hammer out thirty!  You might like it.  If nothing else, you’ll find a few that really sing!  You’ll internalize the image, as well as the focus processes and the multiples aesthetic.  You’ll have that ability and insight as a permanent part of your creative options.  

Who can argue with increasing one’s creative options?  

It’s an investment in yourself; in your discovery.  Your work merits the investigation.  This sort of output declares the importance of your own thinking, research and imagery.

And here’s a surprise:  I’m not making 30 paintings, I’m making one. 

                                                                                                        
 http://jtnwdc.wix.com/jamesthatcherarts                        

The Stillness Project

When I read the phrase, “Receive my Peace” in Susan Young’s daily devotional Jesus Calling I knew I had the bones of a nice inspirational image for the Facebook.

In the throes of my new grid based artworks, the idea had morphed into arrays of individual panels.  I’d just completed a couple dozen small white boxes.  Moving the piles around had gotten interesting as I began stacking them artfully.  I’d taken 62 photos as each box added to the stack made for a new arrangement.

There would be plenty to choose from to illustrate the “Receive My Peace” concept.

Surprisingly, this was not the case.  Looking with the guiding principle of “Peace” I found these images—every one of them—very busy.  

This was disturbing.  I thought that these little white boxes were undeniably quiet works.  No.

For a guy who uses “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” (Matthew 12:34) in his artist’s statement, I had some thinking to do.

Cube Drawing,  Graphite and Acrylic on Prepared Paper  1993  ©   James Thatcher

What was peace and how is it expressed?

Layout Template for "Discovering the Broken Obelisk" , Artist's Book, The Art Library, Brooklyn, NY

The concept of “stillness” came forward:  the square is a practical expression of equilibrium and balance because it is equal on all sides.  It can be an effective symbol of stillness.  

Surface quality was something to consider as well.  Is my signature heavy texture indicative of peace?  Not so much…

Then, in a conversation with a friend about “The Stillness Project” the idea of the color of peace came up.  What is the color of peace?  

Yves Klein regarding the color "Blue"     photo credit Harry Shunk

Perhaps it’s not one color but a range with peaceful application? 

This is the path I am choosing at the moment.  

Peace is alert with conscious choices occurring.  It isn’t sleep, right?  It’s a state of being.  Going back to the original idea, we are to “Receive His Peace”.  Being in the world, but not of the world; it is a gift from The Prince of Peace which we either accept or reject.  

Continually.

http://jtnwdc.wix.com/jamesthatcherarts

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