Tuesday, November 01, 2022

Slight Detour

Large drawing, Mon. 10.31.22

    Made three new large drawings yesterday, including the one above. I'm going to use them for the installation for my show at the Shipley School. I installed the paintings this past Saturday and will start work on the drawing installation Thursday. I already cut this one in half in anticipation of using the two parts in different places on the main wall. The ceiling is pretty high in the gallery space at Shipley, so I'm going to take advantage of that height and extend the wall installation to a couple of other spaces high up: one above the doors leading to the library and another one above paintings on the opposite wall from the main installation wall. I'm also planning on using some colorful rope that I bought the other day to visually connect the three areas. I'm really excited about this and can't wait to get started on Thursday. 
    For a while now, I've had this itch to experiment again with this geometric iconography in my work. It's origins go back to a 2013 painting titled, Everything Happens at Once, a black and white diptych that I showed at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in my show Presence in 2013. In that work, the surface was covered with the same triangular forms abutting each other but in a more compact configuration across two panels. In 2020, I returned to this idea in a few small, 11" x 14" panels I titled Shapeshifter. Those paintings had between two and three of these forms layered on top of one another, with different colors. Here, I'm attempting to keep it at one form over a background. I'll also probably make some with at least two forms above or next to each other, but not layered in my usual way. 
    It's kind of hard leaving just the one form on the page because my tendency is to create very dense compositions these days. I feel like scale is going to be really important for this work in order for it to have the impact it needs. Additionally, I feel that brushwork, different types of surface textures and color tension are going to be the things that will make this work at a larger scale since the plan is to let the forms live on one layer. I made a few drawings tonight and I'm letting those settle a bit before making the commitment to larger works. 

TM

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