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  y recent work continues to explore the possibilities of painting from observation. I work directly from life using still life as a subject and model. The most recent paintings reflect a desire to free the work from a specific and possibly narrow reading of the subject matter. This is done so they can be experienced through a broader, more open metaphor, and as a result function more essentially from a formalist perspective. The intensity of observation and the underlying role of perception in the process become more integral to the experience of the work.
The majority of the new paintings include a glass of water as part of their subject matter. When seeing a glass of water the eye is met with transparency, reflection, and light as opposed to solid, defined, sculptural form. A large part of my working from direct observation revolves around establishing a thorough understanding of the object‘s three-dimensional structure and then giving it a clear pictorial form within the painting. Introducing the properties inherent in glass and water adds an element of the irrational to this process and creates a tension with the other forms in the painting.
Ea ch of these water glasses is paired with a more solid, opaque form. These range from fruit to cigarettes to ceramic ducks. The one consistent element shared by each and every one of these objects is an everyday quality: they are familiar to all, unremarkable, decidedly plebian and un-exotic. They fulfill a purely functional role in the world and most likely pass through our lives used, but unobserved and aesthetically unnoticed. Underlying the choice of each of these objects is a desire to reduce or eliminate any implications or references that might complicate their existence as mere things. In a sense they contain no content, they are what they are, nothing else. Any meaning beyond the purely visual is brought to them solely by the viewer. This allows them to operate in the painted world as purely functional items, although with their roles reversed from that of the actual world. In this context they are purely aesthetic, thoroughly and painstakingly observed, but devoid of any “greal” utility.
This attempt at providing a broader reading of the subject is accompanied by a set of reductive pictorial decisions. Each of these pairs of objects is placed on a white tabletop against a white wall. The objects are placed side by side in a shallow space, reducing any dramatic tensions with the picture plane. The only color comes from the properties of the solid form and from the light itself, which is a mix of natural daylight and artificial light. For the painting to be successful, the unremarkable, everyday facts of these things must be elevated to that of an event, an event worthy of our attention. A pictorial clarity and solidity must be brought forth in the process of observation and the subsequent act of painting. This occurs solely because this bit of the everyday has been seen clearly and provided with a painted existence that transcends its’ limitations in the actual world.
-May 2007
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• Red Flower, oil on panel, 19 x 13", 2008
• Lilly, oil on panel, 17.5 x 13", 2008
• Teacup, oil on panel, 17 x 21", 2008
• Pink Cup, oil on panel, 14 x 12", 2008
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