Last month I had Will Howcroft, Boston area photographer par excellence, take pics of my new work in preparation for my summer exhibit at Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, MA. I had my stockpile of canvases, 17 all together, trucked to ArtSpace Maynard where I was able to spread them out and view the pieces in a lovely large gallery space. The entire day was exhausting and fraught (the movers had not brought a van big enough to carry them, so instead they tied them to the top of the van - very nerve racking!) But fortunately it was a worthwhile adventure, if only to be able to really see how the work played off each other. This is hard for me to do in my basement studio.
So what do I make of this newest body of work, more minimal than anything I've ever done, larger than anything I've done except for the wall installations? First, I see my strong interest in color coming out full force. I credit it to a Foundations of Design class I taught in the fall of 2011 at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. My students were charged to create designs exploring color and value using Color Aid paper. I still have the Color Aid swatches from my own freshman year at RISD. I think I fell back in love with pure color against color.
Also, I wanted very much to explore empty space. I have a tendency to want to make the whole picture plane reverberate with energy, but in these newer pieces, I am exploring the opening up of space.
The doodle shapes that have become such a part of me now, they each hold front and center space. They are letters from some obscure alphabet of the soul. They were my son's doodles, but now I own them. I use them so much that they have become mine.
So what do I make of this newest body of work, more minimal than anything I've ever done, larger than anything I've done except for the wall installations? First, I see my strong interest in color coming out full force. I credit it to a Foundations of Design class I taught in the fall of 2011 at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. My students were charged to create designs exploring color and value using Color Aid paper. I still have the Color Aid swatches from my own freshman year at RISD. I think I fell back in love with pure color against color.
Also, I wanted very much to explore empty space. I have a tendency to want to make the whole picture plane reverberate with energy, but in these newer pieces, I am exploring the opening up of space.
The doodle shapes that have become such a part of me now, they each hold front and center space. They are letters from some obscure alphabet of the soul. They were my son's doodles, but now I own them. I use them so much that they have become mine.