Artist Profile: Tristan Fitch

This series is a study of surface, texture and color created in natural and urban environments. My process for creating a painting is both visual and tactile. Rather than beginning with a drawing, photograph or even a mental image, my vision for a piece is a personal exploration of emotion through color. With wide swooping strokes of a palate knife and repetitive scoring I build up layer upon layer of color to create texture. After building up several layers there comes a point of reduction, the process of erasing previous layers by carving, sanding or wiping away with solvents to reveal a history.

The resulting intersecting lines, repeating patterns, and swarming colors emerge into a unified organic piece. My works reveal a web of actions, reference geology, acknowledge erosion and appeal to the human desire to cross boundaries, to explore. These paintings celebrate the smallest bits of nature and all its grandeur- the wood grain of a tree, water currents, a dense city grid, the cracked surface of a dried lake bottom. Life in layers, tides of color and texture.

http://www.tristanfitch.com/

Crystallo 2013 Oil on Canvas 60″ x 72″