High Desert

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on January 14, 2014 at 5:19pm

Curator’s Comments: 

 

High Desert beguiles the viewer with luscious painted passages and unanticipated textural zones. The red/hot pink scumbled modulations on top of (or underneath?) the hazy blue top panel is a wonderful foil to the more muted cooler shifts below. Rather than reinforcing the compositional feeling of horizontal calm, the color choices awaken the senses and offer energized visual impact. There is a fleeting sensation of landscape in the physical orientation of the dividing center split, but these works are also reminiscent to me of Modernist Color Field paintings, or layered screen prints.  The lighter pinkish frame nicely contains the non-objective marks without constricting the airy opulence of the space. The painting aptly entitled Heat, just below this piece, is another satisfying encounter with blocks of sensational, saturated pigment.  The bottom half reads more directly as a ground, going so far as to lead the viewer into the picture plane through a simply implied curving road.  Whether or not this is an intentional illustrative device, it provides a strong point of access, and entrance.