o, you vile rosemen

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on May 29, 2012 at 9:29am

Curator’s Comment:

 

The title of this piece- ‘O, You Vile Rosemen’- doesn’t offer any additional insight into the content of the cryptic figural abstraction.  I’m very attracted to this painting for its almost pictographic simplification of form, in the midst of a gestural, painterly ground.  Rather than reducing each of the subjects into symbolic representation, the ambiguity of the figures suggests a blurry distance.  The viewer can’t quite make out the forms but there’s a feeling the information is there, just beyond our sight. The darker pathway cutting across the bottom of the picture balances the contrasting form on the far right- both framing the floating elements, and keeping them contained within the pictorial field.  I also enjoy the robust paint quality, which appears to engulf and overlay the embedded subjects.  The pinkish and blue tints successfully unify the piece, and suggest more going on in the under layers.  Another reason I appreciate this particular image is due to the effect of straddling your alternate methods of working.  Your portfolio attests to representational skill in landscape, as well as more graphic non-objective compositions.  But there’s a visual tension here that shows evidence of the artist working through ideas.  In this struggle, I see conflicted forms and shifting space- resulting in an intuitive and highly engaging painting.