In my last update I talked about an exhibition that I'm currently in - it opened on Saturday and the video art crawl that stood in for an IRL opening reception was pretty fun by quarantine standards. See my last post and click the link to watch the video for yourself. It's a pretty good representation of the art scene here in Nashville, TN.
Anyway, I've been spending an hour or so every morning working on the painting I have in that show, and before I finished it I gessoed a few pieces of glossy cardboard that came in some packaging we received. The frame from my last piece was from a chair seat that I replaced. We've all become more self sufficient and I'm always wondering at the usefulness of the materials that define this strange summer at home.
I'm arranging these three small pieces vertically in a triptych. Most of the gestures and lines are actually in the surface of the gesso. The overall composition was mostly all worked out on the surface before I started adding color. I'm using acrylic glazes using both transparent white and water with the paints. These were pure abstractions before I started using the paints but the orange/red was so visceral, and my lines got so squirmy that now it looks to me like a parade of grotesque animals climbing out of the nightmare sludge. The blue looks gorgeous against the sinewy, thanatotic forms. The square surfaces and the triptych arrangement makes this grouping read something like a stained glass window or a narrative mosaic you might find in a church. In that sense you could call this an iconography of blasphemy.
I don't know how to make reverent art. This is irreverent art.
About 4 or 5 more sessions on each of these before I'm done.
Let me know what you think!
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