DrivingTexas3

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on March 5, 2012 at 4:01pm

Among the substantial body of work you’ve produced are some especially strong (plein air?) landscapes.  I’m attracted to Driving Texas (3) because of its large proportion of sky to ground.  It offers a feeling of being adrift in a vast open space, but the ground is reassuringly solid in its sturdy opaque brushstrokes.   I also like that the road cuts across the landscape in a definitive, but unimposing way.  The slight shift in linear shadow and color construct the requisite passage through the space, but it’s subtly allows me to linger in the foreground. Some of the studio shots you’ve posted help me to see the paintings as objects.  But truthfully, in some of the pictures I find the background/ framing unnecessary at best, and distracting in some cases.  I want to get pulled in and visually get lost in the spaces you’ve constructed rather than be reminded of the trappings of making art.  One of your last landscapes (diagonally shot against a black and white striped ground) is a gorgeous little jewel of a piece.  The thicker impastoed sky is held up by the boldly patterned blocks of gold and grey road, and then is reflected on the vanishing horizon.