July 29, 2010 | Filed Under news
When does a painting become sculpture? Perhaps a more appropriate question is, when does a painting become not a painting?
It doesn’t get much more traditional than paint on canvas, but these pieces are far from traditional.
While I call my works paintings for the sake of convenience, they are probably better defined as constructions, or even just art objects.
One of the by-products of this type of process is creating a new language for art. I didn’t set out to find a way to push the boundary of the traditional picture plane, but that is one of the things that is happening in this series. Here, the picture plane is literally destroyed. The painting extends beyond the frame of the canvas, which creates tension. Each fragment is precariously bound to the edge of the picture plane. But are the fragments coming together or flying apart?
These are some of the things I ponder while I work. There are no answers, just questions, and that is the beauty of it.
This piece is the second in a set of four that began with the same colour. I started with the red/orange and, knowing I wanted to use blue as a contrast, worked with a variation of the colour scheme from the first painting. I used a lighter yellow and a deeper maroon to offset the dark blue. This piece went through many stages of painting and re-painting as I tried to find the right colour combination.
Two inches deep, this abstract is 30×30″ and has three levels of wood fragments.