My painting practice pursues a dialogue between 2-3 rectangles of very specific proportions, be it the width of the given material, the aspect ratio of cinema screen (cinemascope, franscope), the size of a particular book, or the proportion of a given architectural element. The notion itself of boundary has dominated my work from graduate school forward. A profound interest in the location of boundaries is a constant theme, whether by line, physical support, painted brush mark, or color change. The paintings are composed of linen almost exclusively, in conjunction with gesso, oil paint, and wax on stretched supports. The fabric aspect of linen itself is of prime importance to these works, as I try to return them to the neutrality or purity of their origin as fabric. One series of paintings retains untreated linen in one panel, while a second panel remains in a prepared gesso state, and a third pushes back to a neutral linen color . A second series examines the use of a specific and saturated color juxtaposed to a silver [non] space that blocks entry to a readily associative color play.
The physical cuts, color divisions and the drawn graphite or silver point lines direct the eye to reconfigure the parts of the whole in a horizontal sequence. The concept of montage (cutting and replacement in a different context) emerged as a strong area of concern to my work with the multiple panel pieces, and introduced the notion of serial repetition and alteration and juxtaposition.
The watercolor and drawing works emerge from a very material interface with the physical properties of pigmented water on Arches paper, chosen for its extreme absorbency, smoothness and near fabric quality. This support receives water in such a manner that the two become infused, integrated and inseparable. Water dissolves the color, transforms it from semi solid into transparent ponds of color, where particles of pigment float, unified by water, destined to achieve the residual, powdery, matt quality implicite in the paper itself. I think of the water that calcifies and marks a glass after several usages, of water that extends laterally, determined by the absorbency of paper, weather, and physical orientation which in turn dictates its boundaries and the hours it will need to become altered: Other. The evaporation references the past, its liquid state and its transformation into a matt, colored stain that evokes the memory and the process of that which was fluid and is no longer. These watercolors encompass themes paramount to my practice: water, literature, and material.
SOURCES
Books and language remain vital links in painting and drawing. I have concentrated on the writings of Maurice Blanchot from l’Espace Littéraire, especially his exploration of the terms le Jour et la Nuit (day and night), and l’ oeuvre et le livre (the work and the book).
My ongoing involvement with the writing and life of Walter Benjamin has brought me to consider fragmentation, chance, and exile in eight distinct installations and two published books.
The works of James Joyce are never far from my reach; especially Ulysses for its very nuanced materiality with concerns of text, placement, and sound.
The films of Jean-Luc Godard have been a passionate interest of long standing in terms of color, montage and aspects of movement versus stasis.
I have also found inspiration in an essay by Jacques Derrida, “les sources de Valéry”, which introduces a play on a water word with [les] sources: to be understood both in the sense of ‘source material’, and as spring, water point or fountain.
PH 2023
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