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4.20.2007

Back on the Road

I know, I know. Bad blogger. I haven't posted in a while. Still busy with other projects. But they're all reaching completion. The first of them: my solo show, Silk Road, at OK Harris in SoHo, which opens next Saturday, April 28. I'll be there from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Come by if you're in the neighborhood. Here's a studio installation shot of some of the paintings:

Studio installation of selected work: Top row: SIlk Road 75, 80, 86, 87; bottom row: 90, 91, 92, 93; all 2007, encaustic on panel, 12x12"

Silk Road is the most reductive painting I’ve done. While my work tends toward the reductive anyway—I refer to my esthetic as "lush minimalism"—each painting in this series is a small color field achieved by layers of translucent paint applied at right angles. It’s not quite the monochrome it initially appears. Each painting has about 10 layers of paint and four or five different hues. Because of the translucent nature of my paint (encaustic) the color mixing takes place in your eye as the layers of color, sometimes as disparate as orange and purple, coalesce into one hue. While you’re up close, you’ll see that the subtlest of grids is formed by the trail of brushmarks and intentionally grainy elements within the paint. Because of the luminous nature of the paint and the surface grid suggestive of woven cloth, the series just named itself. I’ve limned each painting to charge the intensity of its color field and—I hope—to spark the eye so that it travels from painting to painting on a small visual journey of its own.

You can see more of what I'm doing on my schedule blog: www.jmschedule.blogspot.com.