| 15 March – 21 April 2007 |
| PAINTings |
Π37artgallery
DEBATING DRAWING
These works on paper represent my last two years in the studio a time during which i’ve felt like an inventor diasassembling and reassembling a prototype. A long ongoing debate about painting verses drawing is embedded in the fabric of these works.The ever simpler and blunter work I’ here propably results from the unavoidable self-criticism inherent in middle age.primacy counts more than anyting right now. I want to get down to the barest essence: discarding the object for a trace or glimpse of it rsiding in the weight of each mark or shape.Hands on, hands off-it is a workmanlike approach to an existential problem.
For me, these works are as basic as first steps. I make reams of casual, unehearsed drawings, letting my hand guide me. With a brush, I make marks with qouache or acrylic sometimes with colours that happen to be handy or already mixed.Most of these drawings are scrapped, but some arre pinned up for future consideration. the next step is tricky. A kind of marriage takes place, leaving almost eery finished work to consist of two or three fused drawings.In the context, a torn-out detail could become cntral, any fugitive mark or smudge or spill could find it’s vital place. It is a dance between surrender and inention, in which grace is possible. The joinong is a jolt where they meet. Sometimes these separetness of the images is emphasized at this edge or intersection.Sometimes it appears more fluid . in any case, it;s the edge of the paper that determines how the final image coheres. In these drawings, the visual gently claims victory over the conceptual. No boundless ambition ta trackle the entire universe-just passion and attention to a form in space. It’s really something when it happens before my eyes, as if it were simply meant to be: unequivocally real.
July 2005
