Artists Review Artists...My Turn

I've enjoyed participating in JT Kirkland's current project, Artists Review Artists on his blog Thinking About Art, and it's been interesting to read the reviews and see other artists' work. This past Friday, JT posted a review of my work, written by Daniel Mafe, who lives, works, and teaches in Brisbane, Australia.

I found his comments insightful and helpful. The painting I submitted to be reviewed was very new, and much different from my previous work. It's larger, more colorful, includes drawing elements, and is in oil rather than encaustic. This painting reflects another (and very different) approach to ideas about lacunae, a concept I had focused on in earlier work. I feel that I took some risks in finding this other approach, and I appreciate the opportunity to receive unbiased feedback on it.

Lacuna Yellow No. 1 oil on panel 36 x 48

Land Ho!!!

Lacuna (Red Cassandra I & II)
each panel 24 x 24" 2008
encaustic

Check out Joanne Mattera's blog post Gee-Oh!-Graphic for some interesting, artful images from the USGS National Center for EROS and NASA Landsat Project Science Office.

In response to this post, I am showing a pair of my paintings. As I said in an email to JM, I had these paintings hanging over my fireplace for the past month or so and kept seeing them as a sort of map or geographic land projection. When I saw Gee-Oh!-Graphic I felt compelled to post...

Old Material/New Thought: Ed Angell at the Gallery at R&F Handmade Paints

Basalt Ed Angell 2008
found lead, pigmented beeswax

The origin of the symbol Pb (lead) is the Latin word "plumbum," meaning "liquid silver." I love these terms. Ed Angell's current show Old Material, New Thought, now up at R&F Handmade Paints, uses lead and other materials combined with encaustic. These wall-mounted pieces explore process and materiality with easy elegance, in a post-minimal, poetic manner. Though fairly small-scale, and creating an intimate viewing experience, they are also suggestive of objects of a larger scale, bringing to mind certain Barnett Newman paintings. Angell's use of highly saturated, pigmented wax (such as quinacridone red) against the gray of the lead creates an intense contrast; the several pieces using black-pigmented wax offer a more harmonious relationship between wax and lead. In both cases, the viewer is drawn in for closer inspection of the construction of the pieces.

The artist's facility and mastery of materials is especially shown to great effect in the works with gleaming black tar that gracefully descends over the top of the lead substrate. This is also present in the artist's use of hard, impenetrable surfaces that still manage to invite contemplation. Tar, lead, wax: the artist's deft material handling and the relationship of the materials' origin through ancient earth processes gently suggest watchwords such as control, containment, compression. and contrast.

The work can be seen at R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston, NY, through September 20, 2008