Kickback

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 1, 2018 at 1:37pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

I am enamored with these new figurative paintings.  The visceral gestures so beautifully constructed in your previous work seem to have evolved into lighter and more whimsical personas in this new series.  There is even evidence of a cartoonish quality emerging in several pieces, akin to Phillip Guston in the large hand painting entitled OKAY: zero, as well as Rinse Repeat.  Perhaps it is the cowboy of Kick Back reminding me of Red Grooms.  His confident and laid-back pose on horseback dissolves into a much more abstracted ground.  This is an intriguing and abrupt shift within the pictorial space. The exaggerated straw yellow hat sets the figure up as an archetypical caricature, while the piece titled Cowboy reads as a more specific, or individual portrait.  His red hat glows against the darker hues, including the rich browns and violets in his skin.  The juicy brushwork around him creates an ambiguous timelessness without pictorial context, while the handkerchief covering his mouth reminds the viewer that rather than a narrative, what is most revealed in these new works is the meeting of form and the painterly process.