Home»Archive for February, 2009

Josh George

Feb 22nd, 2009 3 Comments

“Voracious Vehemance” mixed media on wood panel  36×48

“Be Recumbent and Hushed” mixed media on wood panel  36×48

“Staunter Through Subversion” mixed media on wood panel  24×36

“Freedom Patrol” mixed media on wood panel  48×48

Artist Statement

My studio is about 200 square feet.  I have one window that lets in morning and afternoon light and fresh city air to dissipate the turpentine.  I have a fluorescent lamp overhead giving decent fake illumination, a sturdy wood easel, a thigh-high file cabinet that holds oil and acrylic paints, brushes, mediums, knives, tools, rags and my various paint pallets that are each an inch thick with years of pigment.  Piled on the floor is a collection of wall-paper sample books that I’ve acquired through various sources.  My main supplier has been a store down in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.  They usually have several books for me that would otherwise be garbage.  Getting them home can be a hassle: it’s a long walk to and from the R train carrying them by their plastic straps.  Wallpaper is an important part to the collage stage; my other important supplier is Giuliana, the owner of the gallery representing me in Milan.  I get a package from her every few months containing miscellaneous labels, maps, stamps and ticket stubs.  The hunt and the searching for these raw materials is endlessly inspiring.  It might be just a color or a repetition that starts the creative process, that makes me wonder:  What kind of narrative can I create out of someone’s discarded junk?

When I start a piece I work from a variety of sketches and photos, from a loose idea that stems from a common scene or situation.  The subjects are unnamed characters or unknown places, often it might be a mundane everyday activity represented but it leads to a setup for some unseen story.  I use my wife and myself as models a lot because it is convenient.  I like to have a life reference for things like hands, toes and noses.  It’s hard to invent the subtle ways that light affects form.

After some quick thumbnails I do a quick line drawing with an oil crayon on a sheet of wood panel that has been primed with a neutral toned latex paint, usually a brick red or a warm gray.  Wood panel is also a hassle to get home.  Sometimes I rent a van and get several pieces, it comes 48 inches by 96 inches, but storage in a Brooklyn studio is limited.  I often find myself getting a piece at the lumber yard that has been cut in half and I hump it home on the subway.  Sometimes the saw there is busted and I end up cutting it up myself on the sidewalk with a utility knife.  Though acquiring these materials is sometimes an arduous task, on my trek from the lumber yard to the studio, I get excited by the blank panels, and see them each as an opportunity.

After my drawing is applied the next step is gluing the collage elements down with gel-medium.  This stage can be the longest and requires patience and precision.  I’m working with pattern, color and texture, big to small, background to foreground— the mess created can get quite exhilarating.  Next I block-in flat areas with acrylic paint using a pallet knife, again big to small, out of focus into focus.  By scraping over the collage elements, I let some colors pop through while covering other areas up.  A kind of chaos is created.  After it has dried thoroughly I rescue it, make sense of the seemingly senseless with oil paint.  This can also be labor intensive, becoming precious at this point.

It takes a few days looking to decide if I’m done or not.  Every shape has to be in its correct location, shadows have to be the correct temperature.  Highlights on eyeballs and fingernails have to give a sense of realism.  To be fully satisfied with a work of art it has to hold some kind of personal gesture that maybe only I get.  It might be a note that my wife has left for me, a used UPS bill, a reference to a comic book I read years ago, or maybe some element is a complete surprise that is done intuitively, something that might have been on my mind prior to starting.  If in fact I am finished I’ll sign it.  The last step right before I photograph it is to apply a protective layer of varnish.  This is done outside of course and seals it up for good.

Contact and Links

www.joshgeorge.com
joshgeorge.blogspot.com

www.triagallery.nyc.com
www.sherryleedy.com
www.entroterra.it

Amy Bennett

Feb 16th, 2009 Leave a comment

Up to Our Necks, Oil on Panel, 6×6 inches

From Now On, Oil on Panel, 13×13 inches

Losing It, Oil on Panel, 16×20 inches

Artist Statement
Two years ago, I contsructed a 1:87 scale model neighborhood, a fictitious cluster of eleven houses depicted through model railroading miniatures, styrofoam, cardboard, and plastic, complete with string telephone wires and working lights. The process of designing and assembling the setting over several months triggered my imagination to develop characters to populate the place along with a loose timeline of events that would culminate in the neighborhood’s history. I considered who lived in each home, their family dramas, and the way their private lives might spill into view of their neighbors. The model became a stage on which to develop the psychological implications of belonging to a particular family, with all of its dramas, struggles and familiar routines. I thought: this tree will be taken down after an old man crashes into it; a father will transform this lawn into an ice skating rink; this house will be abandoned after its residents are scandalized on the evening news.

The paintings are glimpses of a scene or fragments of a narrative. Some of the images are conceived of sequentially. While the images don’t necessarily need to be “read” in order, I am interested in storytelling over time through repeated depictions of the same house or car or person, seasonal changes, and shifting vantage points. Like the disturbing difficulty of trying to put rolls of film in order several years after the pictures have been taken, I hope the collective images suggest a known past that is just beyond reach. I intend for the tiny scale to enhance an urge for more information. Similar to a memory, they are fictional constructions of significant moments and distillations of experience. One of my challenges is to invite the viewer to form his or her own connection and narrative so that he may empathize with the occupants’ seemingly mundane existence.

Working with common themes such as transition, aging, isolation, and loss, I am interested in the fragility of relationships and the awkwardness of a group of people trying to coexist and relate to one another. As I transitioned my model into winter, snowbanks of increasing depth seemed to fortify a sense of isolation and quietness. The paintings portray both the magical and suffocating potential of snow, the wonder at its stark beauty and the hopelessness that spring might never come.

Website
http://www.amybennett.com

Julian Jackson

Feb 5th, 2009 3 Comments

Polestar oil on canvas    74″ x 64″     2008

Drift oil on canvas    67″ x 60″     2008

Afterburn oil on canvas    67″ x 60″     2008

Artist Statement

In the year 1073, Painter and theorist Kuo Hsi asked,  ”Why do people love landscape?”  and answered,  ”Hills and gardens restore our nature (chi),
so we should visit them often”.

Painting for me has always been a means of approaching and understanding the natural world both as we find it and how we apprehend and reconfigure it. The rational construct of the framing rectangle provides limitless interpretive space in which to experience multiple realities. I am particularly interested in creating work with the power to suggest experience rather than define it, where engagement is, in a sense, physical and one enters the painting as one might enter a forest or take the first step on a path. My current work focuses on the ephemeral nature of light as seen through the lens of an abstract painting practice that is at once critical and meditative, formal and yet deeply rooted in the seen. I think of paintings as places that one can revisit often as one would a favorite mountain, tree, garden, or building.

Website

http://julianjacksonstudio.com/

Alex White

Feb 1st, 2009 2 Comments

Traffic Lights, Pastel on Paper, 20×26

Side by Side, Mixed Media on Paper, 14×17

Pencil and Pastel, 20×30 paperboard

Artist Statement

Through expressionism, my work intends to communicate energies and questions that are nestled within our everyday surroundings, yet uncovered only in glimpses and moments. My work begins with a questioning of a temporal communication or detection of a striving connection made with my surroundings in a certain moment. I am using pastels, pencil, oil paint, watercolor and mixed media to explore the reflection of these sensations; recreating the city in a language of line and color that speaks to that moment of mystery and clarity. I am questioning the city – how it relates to us as a human form, a collection of humanity, a source of inspiration and energy.

The city, as a collection of energy and humanity is a source from which we all draw or can draw, and its’ synergies and metaphysical phenomenon allow us to experience life in parallel to others and experience collective emotions. But as a consequence how does this reality affect our mentality and reflection, both individually and as a society/culture, and ultimately instill itself in our identities.

The city as the mental construct of a built, social and natural environment, changes and morphs in relation to our state of mind. When one closes their eyes, everything we associate with the city, in this case New York, can vanish; we can take ourselves anywhere. Yet in the moment we open our eyes we are flooded with the associations, emotions and self-identification that is our place and connection to the city. What is this connection and what does this tell us about ourselves, as both a social and imaginative people?

We must push these notions by examining our environment further to better understand ourselves as it is our imagination, systemization, fear, and humanity that we instill in our built environment, and it is under different lights, hours and mettles that the city changes, just like its creators. Creating a language that can stimulate and explore this dialogue is my challenge.

When people see my work, I’d like them to leave more imaginative, curious and sensitive to their surroundings, and more inquisitive of how we are and how we bend with the temperament and air of the city.

Website

http://alxwyt.blogspot.com/