“Beneath the Stones”
3/20/15
It started like the painting on postcards series – with a surface previously existing. The piece was an unsuccessful abstract work, or maybe the work of a desist, under-valued artist. Either way, the work ended up at Goodwill, and I was inspired by it’s pre-existing marks. The palette was simple, black and red, but there was an energy that spoke to me of new shapes, lines, strokes. There was a surface engraved with a history that I could play on-top of experimenting once again with preliminary marks not my own, and let the piece speak to me in its intended direction. It was a glossy surface and still it reflects a tension of shapes and layers as powdered pigment dances upon the grooves of paint scraped away in a deeper layer.
The visual play of circles and loose brushstrokes create a visceral dissonance. They come together in a minor tone, somehow harmonizing dark earthy greens with pale pinks, bright yellows with iridescent teal. It has a fluid surface; it floats at-top its own gritty history, ready at any moment to flee from the frame and out onto the wall. The marks are microscopic in nature; they cover the surface in it’s entirety, squirming and sliding on top and underneath each other. Open and active, these shapes are not closed, but they have a continuous quality to them; they are not bound by a freeze motion in time; they seem secretly active and alive.
Kal L. Cloonan 