The fall generally means invites to Holiday sales and group shows. This year I was asked to participate in the Sohns Gallery Show, “All Small” this November. Each artist has been given three 6″ X 6″ panels to work with. We were instructed to “paint, draw, collage, print, assemble on our panels. Anything goes as long as the panel is still able to hang on the wall. Normally when given these types of group shows I have tried to make cute works involving characters that I think will sell. I’ve been trying to steer clear of some of the character work recently. I don’t think that I am getting out of it what I once was.
Instead I decided to make a small series out of an image that I had been obsessing over for some weeks. A while back I found myself sitting at a coffee shop called Crema, here in Portland. There are several chairs and a couch which face a massive window in the front which overlooks the harbor. I felt drawn to the power lines across the street. The light was dim that day as the sky was overcast. It hearkened back to the days sitting in coffee shops in Seattle. As I was sitting looking out the window I noticed a plane landing. Suddenly I felt very much in tune with the aircraft which were taking off and landing far more frequently than I had ever noticed. I thought back to living in my old house where I could feel the planes as they started to come into the runway. The silhouette of the plane seemed so powerful to me and yet so small against the vastness that was the sky. It’s a simple image really, but one that I’ve been obsessed with since.
I started drawing the scene over and over again on small pieces of wood. Several of the resulting pieces I then glued down to the surfaces of my three All Small pieces.
The first piece I really wanted to add an element from a Jasper Johns piece. For some reason the target pieces seemed to work with the airplane imagery. I’m not sure exactly how the viewer will read this piece, but that’s a good thing right?
The last piece included the first image that I drew from my coffee shop experience. I decided to work with the same type of imagery that I had used in my work for 10 X 10 Brunswick. I determined that the painterly and the more graphic would balance out nicely, and I think that it does.
The pieces don’t feel like my usual imagery or like they fall into my usual visual tropes. It was an extremely liberating process to work on these pieces. Hopefully I can loosen up even more in the coming months. I feel like I am finally feeling more interested in the act of painting than I am in trying to push some false agenda on the work. I wonder how that will effect the viewing experience of my work.
Peace
-Mike