Stretched thin, holding too much

A new untitled work in the studio: 12" x 12", acrylic on panel

I've been making some new, small, non-objective paintings over the past week, of which the above is one. I'm returning to these connected, elongated forms that I started working with back in 2013 with paintings like Channel, which I showed in my solo show, Presence, at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. I felt something about the forms and constructed spaces I used then, but, as has happened in the past, I felt that I couldn't really continue making paintings in the same way, even as I thought then that there was more to investigate. Instead, as how it happens often, I went down another road and set about exploring the glyph forms that I experimented with years ago (late '90s). So, here we are seven years down the line and I'm once again digging into the past and bringing something forward (art as time travel). 

The paintings I did in 2013 weren't about the body, but they spoke to the conditions of the body as being acted upon by external and internal forces. The main paintings I'm referring to measured 72" x 24", dimensions that a human form could fit into. I looked at these canvases more as mirrors reflecting a myriad of possibilities or incarnations for the human body. It's the human body being acted upon that's spearheading my latest investigations. The social upheavals of the past few years in the U.S. over the relentless and senseless killings of black and brown men, women and children by law enforcement and especially this year with the backdrop of the pandemic, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and white supremacy being enabled by the president (and followers) has been almost too much to bear. Combine that with the absolute criminal anti-Black and, frankly, anti-human policies of the president and the Republicans making each day a stressful unknown and you have a recipe for mental and physical breakdown. 

The trauma and stress that I have because of all of this is both physical and mental, internal and external. There are days when I feel like my mind is being stretched so thin that it might snap from attempting to comprehend all of the anger, hatred and outright criminal behavior coming from the GOP, the president and their followers, not to mention having to adapt to how rapidly things went bad. The new paintings are shaping up to be avatars for a lot of what I feel is going on within and around me. The forms within the paintings seem to contract and stretch against the boundaries of the panels at the same time, reflecting the conflicts I feel internally. 

So far, I've only been working on small paintings (12" x 12", 14" x 11"), getting a feel for how I may approach the subject matter on a larger scale. I feel like I'm in a good place with how things are progressing. I keep finding novel ways of dealing with a limited set of forms, and a limitless amount of potential colors to use. It's a good place to be. I'm pretty sure that I'll start working on the third five foot canvas I have here this week. I'm feeling pretty confident about handling the work on a larger scale, so I may as well get going on it. I have three, almost four, small panels completed and will have more done by the end of the week. 

I'm not abandoning the glyph work, but I am reassessing how I want to work with those forms and reconsidering the proper formats for them. I'm currently feeling like they work better on a smaller scale than, say the 60" square canvas I just finished today. I also think that they work better on panels or heavier paper instead of canvas. I'm looking into making some collages with paper and cardboard glued together instead of adhering the paper, etc... to another surface. There's a lot of work to get to this week. 

TM

...for what I want to see

New painting in progress

Last night, I had a bit of a revelation about where I am right now with my work. There is now an overwhelming need for less density in the paintings, or perhaps a different type of density. I'm not sure what that will look like, but it will be different from what I've been making lately. I came to this realization after making connections between my recent work with the densely layered compositions of glyphs and my current emotional state.

The past few days have been rough, emotionally. The death of Walter Wallace at the hands of Philadelphia Police is the latest in a too-long line of similar events that did not need to escalate to an extra-judicial execution in the street. He was having a mental health crisis, had a knife and approached the police, who fatally shot him ten times from at least ten feet away. 

This didn't have to happen. Wallace didn't have to be killed in front of his mother, family and neighbors like that. I keep asking myself, "Why couldn't they at least shoot him in the leg, incapacitate him and de-escalate the situation and get things under control?" The outcome is always the same with Black lives when it comes to policing; shoot to kill, maybe ask questions later. 

Standing in front of a newly repainted work last night, I realized that I really needed to step back and re-evaluate things. I took some white paint and covered up all but one pink, blob-like form. When the white dried, I made a loose grid of lines with an acrylic marker, over which I brushed some matte medium, smearing and blurring the grid. I looked up an album of the Daily Observation photos in my photo stream and sought out something that I could use from one or more of those shots. I found a couple of curvilinear forms that loosely replicated and over those, placed a reddish blob form in the lower left corner. 

I felt such a relief looking at this relatively pared down image! All of the denseness underneath showed through in the textures, but other than that, this painting now breathed like it hadn't before. The heaviness was gone. I realized in that moment that I wanted and needed to move to a different phase of this project with the glyphs; that I needed to focus on some of the other surfaces and instances of marks that I see every day in the streets. So far, I've been concentrating on the 'communication' aspect of this work, which has a very graphic feeling to it. The painted, multi-layered systems I make are full of a type of tension that I like, but that same density now feels overwhelming to me. 

I'm sure that my emotional state has finally caught up to what I've been doing in the paintings and it's just too much. Between the ongoing problems associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, the continuing social strife brought about by the killings of Black men, women and children by police authorities and the current toxic political climate, I'm just feeling overwhelmed. I've been fairly successful at keeping myself focusing energy on painting, but now, I need to change the energy of my paintings to reflect the breathing room I need, instead of the suffocating mournful feelings that keep coming back because of everything going on. 

TM