First Prints and Some Research

So after an adventure in Arrington Virginia battling the rain and the heat and eventually the cold, I have returned and started where I left off.  I have completed my first two silk screens with some exciting results and motivation for the future.  Largely, I see this as a color study so far but am coming up with idea for how to integrate smaller silkscreen layering into my body of abstract paintings.  Here they are.

I still can't get over how simple this process is and yet it lends itself to a vast array of possibilities.  More playing with color combinations and opacity and transparency.  Maybe I'll do a few on white paper.  It all reminds me of being in a dark room with all the specific steps.  Cue paper, rase screen, pull color, lower screen, pull color, raise screen, remove paper, rinse, and then go to the next screen and repeat.

Ok, so that is what happened in the creation side of things since I have been back.  More to come about all that as I make more attempts.  Research has continued and I'm finding that I am aware of a lot of contemporary artists but I haven't memorized all the names that go with the works.  Art history was never my strongest area.  Anyways, I am investigating abstract artist that are largely dependent on mark making for the time being.

Sue Williams, Mark Bradford, Matthew Ritchie are a few examples.

Sue Williams created gestural paintings during a time when New York City's radical art community was rather anti-painting in mentality and she placed the responsibility of expression on her quality of line. Previous to this time she was more direct and aggressive in her presentation of sexism, rape, insest, and other forms of sexual violence by way of more objective representation.  Later work holds abstractions of the body in particular genitals and orifices, wrinkles, hair, and things that peak her interests like chicken feet.  Never full body abstractions like the works of de Kooning.  Basically she went from outrage among the sexist art world to profound abstract painter in a very short time.  I always thought that Miro and Arshile Gorky just spent there time abstracting genitalia and organelles but I may need to do more searching to confirm for sure.

Mark Bradford has always been a master of presenting community through abraction and is also largely dependent on the marks he makes with paint and collage.  His pieces are worked so intensely that these studio creations convince the viewer that they may be actual maps of real locations but are rather just representations or the community dissonance and harmony that exist along the ever changing urban landscape.  I see population distributions and the process of urban decay.  The decay he presents through collaging with images from third party advertising that has aged and faded in the sun over a matter of days as well as his use of reductive methods with grinders and sand paper.  Again these works do not work without the weight of focus distributed to mark making.

Mathew Ritchie fits in nicely with my recent critique.  There is no canvas in much of his work.  The space the work exists in becomes the surface breaking from the border and deckled edges.  His work crosses the border and back between sculpture and painting.  What I find interesting about his work is how graphic it is in much the same way that screen printing creates a graphic mark.  The layering and entanglement of his work create and amazing amount of depth in an abstract universe.  Apparently his work evolved out of minimalist influences.  His work is largely inform through the collection of information and the control we put on that flow of information.  What we take in and what we don’t and he presents this through intensely controlled and often overwhelming compositions that he creates through drawing painting and computer manipulation.