Studio work, 10/13/12

"QR-2", oil on panel, 8"x8" (10/2012)

Small paintings from Rise|Fall exhibit

Untitled, oil on panel, 20"x20"

Untitled, oil on panel, 20"x20"

Untitled, oil on panel, 12"x12"

Untitled, oil on panel, 12"x12"

Untitled, oil on panel, 12"x12"

Untitled, oil on panel, 8"x8"

Untitled, oil on panel, 8"x8"

Untitled, oil on panel, 8"x8"

Gorky's Granddaughter: Laurel Sparks, July 2012

My wonderful MFA advisor, Laurel Sparks, was recently interviewed by Gorky's Granddaughter.  Showing her recent work in the studio, Laurel gives an honest, raw description of how she develops her ideas, changes things up, and "throws out her Rosetta stone".  Laurel has a wonderful appreciation of both systems (she talks about her use of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies), and an intimate, personal, process-oriented sense of touch. 

Here's the link:
Gorky's Granddaughter: Laurel Sparks, July 2012

When I first looked at Laurel's new work online,  I sensed a shift in her place, having moved to New York in the last year or so.  And so I attributed her changes to a change of place. But, editorializing a bit, I love her discussion of discovering a personality in a painting.  She seems to set up the conditions of personality, and then, as in real life, you discover the unknowable aspects of personality -- hence obliteration of the original conditions.

One favorite part of the video for me is minutes 15:56-16:06, which displays a glittering, sparkling space (is it the night sky, or sparkling spandex?) surrounded by pastel, geometric segments and punctuations of built up visual moments.

Alchemy.

New work - June 21

Untitled, 12"x12"

Untitled, acrylic on board, 12"x12"

Rise / Set exhibition July 6-July 26, 2012

Nocturne, oil on canvas, 52"x52"

Rise / Set : Paintings by Jill Christian

Inspired by nuanced light and color in the moments surrounding dawn and dusk, the paintings in this exhibition present fields of brushstrokes that completely fill the canvas with subtly shifting colors.  Working within the structure of repetition and reduction, these process-driven, meditative paintings create rhythmic patterns that invite quiet contemplation of their surfaces.

Opening Reception:

Friday, July 6, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

(in conjunction with ArtsCrawl's First Fridays)

Exhibit Dates:

July 6, 2012 - July 26, 2012

The Harwood Art Center

1114 7th Street NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 (505) 242-6367

www.harwoodartcenter.org

Exhibit may be viewed during Harwood Art Center gallery hours and by appointment by calling (505) 379-9836.

Gallery hours are Monday - Friday, 10 AM to 4PM.

Studio Work, June 1, 2012

This month I am working on a 52"x52" for an upcoming show at Harwood Art Center. This will be one of two large pieces that will hang on opposite sides of the gallery. The summer skies have been particularly colorful at dawn and sunset due to recent wildfires in New Mexico. The colors are seeping into my work -- heavy blues and vibrant oranges.

Untitled (detail), 2012,  oil on canvas, 52"x52"

Untitled, 2012,  oil on canvas, 52"x52"

Studio Work 5/26

Today dropped of work for an upcoming show at the Outpost Performance Center.

One of the paintings in this show is the painting I worked on for most of the month of May:

Untitled, 43"x43", oil on panel

In my last post about this painting, I said that it was inspired by a painting by Childe Hassam.  It is, but in the weird way of painting, I didn't know that when I began.  I began the painting with the idea of doing a painting with colors that would suggest a time of day.  A short time after I began the painting, I was having some troubles with color mixing, and picked up a painting book by Julia Aristides: Classical Painting Atelier.  On a page covering Impressionism, there in a painting by Childe Hassam were the colors I was using.  I wasn't consciously exploring Impressionism.  However, after thinking about it more, my last elective seminar in the MFA program was on the relationship between painting and photography with a photographer, Liz Deschenes.  One topic we discussed was the interaction between painting and photography as there was as a shift towards direct observation of the landscape.  One artist we talked about was John Constable, who painted a whole series of sky paintings, detailing the exact conditions in which the painting was created.  There were both photographers and painters (Claude Monet is a good example) who would capture/depict images of the same subject under different conditions -- the primary variable being light.  I found this fascinating, and considered a series of paintings based on the light and colors of the sky during different times of day.  I quickly discovered this idea has been hashed over many times.  I am not yet sure whether that matters.  But I find the history of this idea to be worth looking into.

Studio work - May 16

I decided to bring in more color with a whimsical painting inspired by looking at a painting by Childe Hassam.