Link to Post:
http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2012/09/svenja-deininger-at-kunsthalle-kerms/
Photo blog of an exhibition of paintings by Svenja Deininger at Kunsthalle Krems, Vienna, on view through September 30, 2012.
The gallery notes that: "The fact that [Deininger] does not work according to what is seen but rather examines the conditions of vision itself can also be sensed in the central significance of the color white for her work. Both as paint and primer, it emphasizes the materiality of the picture support. In its opacity, it simultaneously creates optical phenomena such as light-dark transitions, depth of space or the modeling of forms. Both with the material and purely visual effect, different spaces are made by contiguous surfaces and translucency that, according to the artist, are not 'a translation of the physical world into painting, not about color as a symbolic language but rather as ambiance (…).' "
Link to Post:
http://www.paintersbread.com/2012/09/painting-how-you-feel-not-how-you-should.html
Michael Rutherford writes about a selection of painters whose instincts are leading them to make work beyond the limits of "the plane."
Rutherford writes: "Professional skateboarders have a saying, 'skate how you feel, not how you should,' and the most experimental and engaging artists have always operated just like that - working how they feel, not how they should. Currently, I see painters and others asserting their freedom and pushing the progression of painting in increasingly fresher ways. Specifically, I’m noticing more loosely hung, sometimes radically altered or reattached swaths of canvas (among other things) without need of being held taut and hung into place by stretchers. In other examples, the stretcher bars remain, but they’ve been reconfigured in diverse ways with vastly different intentions. But in the most arcane instances, paint has been applied to other objects altogether: utensils, detritus, you name it. It’s clear there’s no further pushing of the picture plane here, but some rather bracing yet energizing examples of painting post-plane."
Link to Post:
http://studiocritical.blogspot.com/2012/08/peter-geerts.html
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Peter Geerts about his work and process.
Geerts comments: "The elements of which I want to a painting to be built of, I always have in mind when I start, but I also allow myself the attitude to arrange and play with them in the process of the work. Often comes the idea of a second or third painting/as part of the result. The concept is clear; the formulation of it in real colour, shape, composition is a process."
Link to Post:
http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2012/08/working_with_el.html
Jeff Jahn interviews Mark and Rae Mahaffey about printmaking with painter Ellsworth Kelly on the occasion of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly/Prints at the Portland Art Museum through September 16, 2012.
Jahn notes that Kelly's "forms are sourced from real life, first carefully observed, then captured in photos and lastly distilled until nothing but the form transforms Ellsworth's own personal subjective experience into something more universal. It is as if Kelly has taken an Epicurian impulse (it is obvious he knows something about enjoying life) and somehow found a way to make into a distillate that others can translate with their eyes."
Link to Post:
http://www.inthemake.net/Jessica-Snow
Klea McKenna and Nikki Grattan visit the studio of painter Jessica Snow.
Grattan writes: "Jessica doesn’t want the labor to come through in her paintings; she often begins with multiple sketches to work out the formal qualities she’s after before starting a painting. Aesthetically she wants the brushstrokes to disappear and the layers upon layers to become indiscernible. Interestingly, what drives this precise and controlled process is her desire to make something that looks effortless and spontaneous... by making the process imperceptible, the viewer is left completely alone with the finished work and that potentially a singular and unpredictable experience is sparked."
Link to Post:
http://eyelevel.si.edu/2012/08/why-i-am-not-a-painter-on-michael-goldbergs-sardines-.html
Howard Kaplan blogs about Michael Goldberg's painting Sardines (1955), the inspiration for Frank O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter, which documents the painting's progress.
Kaplan writes: "O'Hara was a very generous friend. He was particularly giving to his painter friends, including Goldberg, in looking at their work and responding to it. Joe LeSueur in his invaluable Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara states that O'Hara offered his painter friends 'encouragement, inspired them with his insights and his passion; they impinged upon and entered his poetry, which would not have been the same and probably not as good without them.' One can say in turn that the painters he knew and cultivated would not possibly have achieved all they did without O'Hara's enthusiasm and feedback."
Link to Post:
http://artinfo.com/news/story/821974/%E2%80%9Ci-just-wait-until-it-goes-pow%E2%80%9D-abstract-painter-ed-moses-on-his-methodical-and-intuitive-process
Alanna Martinez interviews painter Ed Moses about his work and process and his continuing belief in the "romance of painting."
Moses remarks: "Sometimes I’ll work on a painting over a couple of months, and sometimes I hit it right off the bat. When I do, what happens is at the end of the day, I drag the painting, kicking and screaming, into my studio, tilt it up along the walls... I use incandescent lights. I don’t like paintings lit by fluorescent lights. What happens when people use fluorescent lights is they light the room and then put the paintings in. I put the paintings in and then focus on the paintings with the incandescent lights. The painting is the issue, not the environment in which the painting exists. Fluorescent light neutralizes. There’s no drama to it, there’s no romance. But that’s not a popular attitude at this particular point. People are more interested in ideas than the romance of painting. I’m still old-fashioned in that sense. I’ve been painting 50 or 60 years, so that has something to do with being still in that situation."
Link to Post:
http://studiocritical.blogspot.com/2012/08/ralph-hunter-menzies.html
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Ralph Hunter-Menzies about his work and process.
Hunter-Menzies writes: "I find it is simultaneously productive and undermining to work on a series; each work informs the next and they create a conversation between themselves, but at the same time you have to be constantly trying new colour combinations and marks out, making sure they have their own voice. This is partly why I work on larger works at the same time; it makes me look and paint on a different scale, which makes it harder to just become comfortable with one size and therefore disrupts the likelihood of copying what you may have done in previous works."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/frank-bowling-interview/
Robin Greenwood talks to painter Frank Bowling about his life and work at the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip… Frank Bowling's Poured Paintings 1973–8 at Tate Britain, on view through April 30, 2013.
Bowling remarks: "What we inherited from the first generation [of abstract expressionists] was the freedom to apply the paint in any which way you want, pouring it, spilling it, dripping it … It was a kind of exhilarating thing to feel, that you can make a work, and make a work that's really rich, and right on the way… to the best that's ever been done with paint by spilling and dripping, pouring… the whole thing was so open…"
Link to Post:
http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2012/08/color-field-and-form-part-11.html
In the next-to-last post of a series about painting and color, Joanne Mattera blogs about several recent New York exhibitions including: Fran Shalom: Paintings Painted at The Painting Center, Debra Ramsay: Desire Lines at Blank Space, and Martha Clippinger: Hopscotch at Elizabeth Harris Gallery.
