Vanishing

Comment

Comment by Christian M. McLeod on July 18, 2015 at 1:22pm

In this painting, 'Vanishing" Its all in 'The Push and Pull' to quote Hans Hoffman. It was a bit of a departure from my other more immediate marks.

Comment by Resident Curator on July 12, 2015 at 3:25pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

It occurred to me that this piece (Vanishing…Lores) has Hans Hoffman-like blocks of flatter color against your more agitated and frenzied mark making that I’ve relished in your other paintings.  Coincidentally, you have another recent piece that I believe references Hoffman in the title. (Hoffman’s Lake)  But on closer inspection the formal decision to include rectangles of more pure primary blue or green hues only superficially resembles Hoffman’s signature Abstract Expressionism.  I believe your paintings resonate with a considerably more tactile surface, with palpable vacillation between energetic areas and only slightly less contrasting parts.  I don’t detect the formal “push” and “pull” that true flatness might create.  But your painting may be better for it. The higher chroma bits of blue and green align with light highlights that suggest a water line.  Seeing the piece pictorially rather than non-objectively, semi-translucent water and sky (or land) is interrupted by more solid matter as in human vessels. It’s a very painterly work, which I see as resisting the grid structure of organization in favor of a building tension to move back to personal expression and gesture.