Looking back: "Inverted Dislocation" brochure, 2004

(Above: Brochure for "Inverted Dislocation", with essay by Gerard Brown, 2004)

Recently, I've been going through old art-related papers, exhibition notices, writings, etc...and starting the task of organizing it all. It's been interesting to look back over some of this history, think about that time and how far I've come since. Above are photos of the exhibition brochure for my first solo show at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery, back in 2004. The show was titled, "Inverted Dislocation" and featured works that were much more 'minimal' in appearance than anything that came after. 

I was interested in minimalism at the time, but not the idea that the human hand should not be present. That felt like a dead-end line of thinking for me. I was very much into the materiality of paint on surfaces and not hiding that a person made these works. The extreme side of minimalism, as practiced by Donald Judd and others, shunned any trace of the human hand in the making of art work. With my paintings, I wanted to bring the viewer in with strong form and color and hopefully keep their attention when they got up close and saw all of the shifts in color, surface quality and other materials that I may have used, like graphite. 

A few years prior to this work, in the mid to late 90's, I was making work that was much more grounded in a kind of mixed media painting that straddled the line between painting and sculpture. Those works were comprised of acrylic on wood panels, aluminum, plexiglas, hardware like screws and more. As I worked my way through that body of work, I felt the pull towards a more stripped down kind of painting that was influenced by the Irish-

American painter, Sean Scully and aspects of architecture in cityscapes. My thinking at the time focused on creating spaces that referenced man-made environments, but weren't about a specific place or time. 

Considering Scully's huge influence on my work then, I really struggled with making these paintings, but felt compelled to do so. I wanted to make what I considered straight-forward, bold paintings that subverted viewers' expectations. The first thing people would see were the colors and patterns and maybe think about going past them, but hopefully, the work would be enticing enough for them to come closer to the painting for a better look and discover that there was more going on besides the first impression of pattern and perceived flatness. There's all manner of brushwork, variations in color and other marks that energized those paintings.

My reticence in showing these paintings was that I considered them to be too much like Sean Scully's work. Now, I knew that they didn't really look like his work, but I had been so nose-deep in studying his work that I felt that anyone would make that connection. Maybe they did, but the more I painted, the more that I realized that these were definitely *my* paintings and not knock-offs of Scully's pieces. Realizing that I didn't want those automatic comparisons, I did as much as I could to make my compositions as unique as I could within the parameters of form and color that I set for myself. Once I got past my fear of comparison, I dove into the work fully and feel that I managed to make a group of paintings that stand on their own.

TM

A look back: Roam (Blue), 1999

Roam (Blue), 1999, mixed media, 33" x 48"

I've been thinking about some older work for a while now and this piece in particular, over the past week. I don't know why, but I've felt the urge to unwrap some older work and post them up on IG for "Throwback Thursdays". More importantly, I just haven't just looked at a lot of older work in a while. I need to document a ton of work, but haven't figured out how that will work with Covid, especially with the sickness and death counts getting worse all over the country again. I need to order a light kit soon, right after my next payment comes through. In the meantime, I'll just pull out works unwrap/rewrap them and at least take some studio shots of them, until I feel safe having someone come over to shoot a bunch of work. 

This piece (above), is one of my favorite older works. I made it out of wood scraps, plexiglas and hardware. At the time, I was heavily interested in expanding my idea of what painting could be and wound up suspending a sheet of painted plexiglas above the wood surface and adding another piece of plexiglas to the bottom. Movement, color and materials were the things that drove the making of this work. One of the challenges of Roam was how to integrate the hardware into the work.This was the first time that I was attempting to have a "floating" surface, so I spent a little time figuring out how to make that part work, in addition to choosing what the image was going to be. To keep things simple, I chose one color and that was black.There were a couple of darker elements already and I felt that the black floating above the main piece would create just the right amount of counterpoint to the other colors. An unexpected treat were the shadows created when the piece is lit from the ceiling when installed, creating another layer of visual interest. 

I also liked working with the plexiglas because it was just thick enough to create a layer of distance between the viewer and the painted surface (the plexiglas was painted on the back). I painted the main body with three divisions which enhanced the feeling of movement with the floating plexiglas, which also echoed the bottom panel that was also divided into sections and had a small area of "cells" emerging from the bottom. 

I made a few pieces similar to this around the same time period ('98-'99) that incorporated a mix of materials with varying levels of success. With the other pieces, aluminium, enamel paint and shellac were major components. This approach ran its course and I returned to a more traditional way of making paintings on single surfaces around 2000. 

TM

The same and yet, different

In my studio: It's Not The Same You, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 60" s 60"

I've been letting this one sit for a while, although I mentioned it in my last post. It's a new 60" x 60" painting on canvas titled, "It's Not The Same You" (the title comes from a line in The Cure song, Labyrinth, that I happen to like a lot). This is the first large painting on canvas that I've attempted at my home studio in a while because, until a few weeks ago, I didn't have room to even think about making something of this size there. Most of my work in this space has been smaller and was being made in a former smallish bedroom that lacked adequate wall space for something this large. Most of the work that I've been making in-studio has been up to about 30-36" on the longer side. 

I realized a few months ago, that I was going to need more work space, but was stumped on how to make that happen. I don't have money to pay for an outside space, so I chose to convert the front room of the apartment into a work space in addition to the bedroom. I got rid of a couple of dressers and a bookcase, put plastic on the walls and floors, plus and additional layer of drop cloth on the floor. Now, I have a version of a studio that I've envisioned for a long time. I can make larger paintings like this and be able to step back at a decent distance to evaluate them. However, the only way that this is possible is because I've moved a good amount of my personal belongings into my girlfriend's home. Without that support, I would still be trying to figure out how to make this work. 

Over the past couple of years, I've been able to make large temporary murals and installation pieces, but they were either made on-site or in another space that could accommodate the scale of those pieces. Being able to return to stand-alone paintings on canvas of this scale has felt great and has also brought some of the usual challenges. From the start, this painting has felt like one that I had to get out of my system; it's a large scale amalgam of ideas that I've been working on in smaller contexts over the past four years or so. In the past, I've been fond of working on similar paintings at the same time, forming a series of sorts. My present feeling has me looking to break with the past by having more visible distance between some of the paintings. The glyph forms are the only thing that will carry over from one painting to the next. Some will have more of those forms and others will have fewer. For example, I've already begun painting a second 60" x 60" painting that will probably have little in common with this one, compositionally and colorwise, in the end; it has a shimmering black/purple background with a layer of gridded glyphs, so far. I've gathered a lot of new visual ideas these past few years and now I'm feeling comfortable exploring them more deeply on a one-on-one basis, and not rushing to make too similar paintings so much. 

TM

 

Studio journal: October, 2010

Studio journal, October 2010

Process control patches from various packages.

For some reason, I went through a period of collecting these color blocks and taping them in my sketchbooks. I find them quite interesting as little pieces of art, I guess. I also like that they impart something about the making of the packaging, and by extension, tell us something about the marketing of the products within that packaging through the use of specific combinations if the CMYK color palette.

Blue Into Green

"Blue Into Green"

©TimMcFarlane2013

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Joanne Mattera Art Blog: Fifty Shades of Gray

Think gray has little or no personality? You might want to rethink that position after taking a look at Joanne Mattera's recent blog post: 

Joanne Mattera Art Blog: Fifty Shades of Gray

living color

I love to work with color, but nothing I can come up with can match the amazing things that nature can produce. Take, for instance, the brilliant hues of Toxic Nudibrachs, photographed by David Doubilet for National Geographic Magazine.

The soft bodied sea slugs are pretty vulnerable except for the toxins they absorb from prey. Those toxins wind up creating amazing colors and patterns on the skins of the slugs, in addition to taking them off the menu of larger, faster predators.

Here's a related video