June 30, 2004
20040627 drawing
Untitled, 2004, watercolor & pencil on paper, 7 1/2 X 6", scanned
This past weekend I did a bunch of ink and watercolor things on 11 X 8 1/2" and 7 1/2 X 6" paper, all with a sumi-e brush. Most of the watercolor things were red and green, and all of the ink work was black. The problem was I simply didn't know what I wanted to do, and never really felt like I got anywhere. They're all trash, except this one that, when I looked through the stack of paper yesterday, jumped out at me as maybe the beginning of something, and somewhat related to how in my mind I jump from HTML drawings to drawings on paper, something more in spirit than literally a visual interpretation, and which I haven't yet figured out how to do physically.
This is five slow strokes with a very dry brush that's about 1/2" in diameter with hairs about 1 1/2" long. Almost as soon as each stroke was brushed it was already dry. The darker red at the bottom of each stroke is a second pass with a still dry brush rubbed in almost dry watercolor from a well in the palette. The pencil was ruled after, with a yellow #2 pencil, corresponding to the stroke. The paper is from a stack of card stock I have sitting around, the same used last year for a series title "Energy" produced for Rudolf's Diner.
I like the clear character of each stroke, the supporting straight line, the modesty of means and lack of presumption, the sense of air and breath, the pace of the eye through the five figures, and how the structure is not far from the grid I've been using so much for three years now but not overbearingly present. This is not a finished work, but I think there is an idea in here that I can use.
June 29, 2004
June 28, 2004
June 27, 2004
June 26, 2004
June 25, 2004
Hummingbirds 10-18
The above image is a .gif. When I compile a series of HTML drawings, such as these nine, they are formatted in a way that is way too large for a monitor. After compiling the drawings I take screenshots and then produce a much smaller graphic representation of the series, making a picture of the HTML drawings, not the actual HTML drawings. However, when I do this I always include a link to the HTML compilation file; click the above graphic and a rather large web page will load with the nine drawings in full, glorious HTML, much too large to be viewed at once on any monitor. This is just my little friendly way of being helpful to the viewer.
Hummingbirds 1-18
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2, 7 6 , 3, 8 5 , 1, 9 |
18, 15, 12 17, 14, 11 16, 13, 10 |
June 24, 2004
June 23, 2004
June 22, 2004
June 21, 2004
June 20, 2004
June 19, 2004
June 18, 2004
Joanna Pousette-Dart at Charles Cowles, New York
Joanna Pousette-Dart
Charles Cowles
537 West 24th Street, Chelsea
Through June 26Joanna Pousette-Dart has been making high-quality, nonironic abstract paintings for more than 30 years. But in the last 20 she has had only three solo exhibitions, counting this one, and her last was nine years ago. So this excellent show is something to savor.
Why Ms. Pousette-Dart waits so long between shows is hard to say. The paintings here — compositions of flat, curvy shapes and fat, swooping lines on two-part canvases shaped like shields, boat hulls or billowing square sails — give the impression of having been made with effortless grace. (Late Willem de Kooning and recent Brice Marden come to mind.) But maybe that is crucial: in art as in sport, it is hard to make it look easy.
Ms. Pousette-Dart is serious about Modernist abstraction, but there is nothing too sober or sanctimonious about what she does. Her paintings have lovely, slightly dry eggshell surfaces and a colorful, slightly muted palette with pastel tendencies. They have been made with a caressing touch that suggests thoughtful spontaneity. While the compositions of loopy shapes and lines fit tightly into the eccentrically shaped panels — in some cases evoking Northwest Indian design — they don't feel cramped; they convey a buoyant, free feeling. There is a mutually responsive relationship between the container and the contained — or between body and soul — that is a pleasure to behold.
KEN JOHNSON
From the Charles Cowles press release:
POUSETTE-DART describes this body of work as informed by landscape but less about the physical reality of landscape than about, "the experience of moving through it, and about certain inherent primal relationships that are a constant. After traveling and working in New Mexico, I began moving away from the rectangle to shapes suggesting anomalies of space, distance, and horizon. I saw the alignment of the shapes as a momentary stance within an encompassing event – an idiosyncratic conjunction implying imminence and the lie of completion. I wanted the shapes to interlock with the drawing inside them to form a continuum. The image is generated from the place where the panels meet. It knits them together while unraveling them from within."
Posted by chrisashley at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)
