A few new posts soon!

I will post some new work very soon. Unfortunately I will then be unavailable for most of August. But this blog is not being abandoned. I am thinking about different kinds of posts to do. Maybe some interviews. Perhaps thematic posts with different artists. We'll see. But in the short term I will post a few new people. Promise.

Apologies

Due to schedule changes and now computer problems the blog has gotten hung up. I will post more artwork soon. I promise.

Gwen Davidson

"Reflection"  48" x 60"  acrylic and charcoal on paper on canvas  2014

"Wallowa Mountains"  48" x 36"  acrylic and charcoal on paper on canvas  2014

"Fields near Galway Bay"  36" x 48"  acrylic and charcoal on paper on canvas  2012

"Beach Fire"  24" x 36"  acrylic and charcoal on paper on canvas  2013

"Neahkahnie Haze"  48" x 60"  acrylic and charcoal on paper on canvas  2014

Here's another artist whose work will be on display this month in my home town of Portland, Oregon (see also Jackie K. Johnson featured in my previous post). Both artists explore the gray areas between landscape and abstraction, but while Ms. Johnson sets out on what seems to me an almost narrative endeavor, Ms. Davidson's art is more descriptive and meditative. She works initially with a combination of acrylic paint and charcoal on paper. The paper, in rectangular strips of varying proportions, are then applied to canvas. The method gives the work a rigid geometric framework but the organic nature of her subject not only survives but somehow thrives within it. Perhaps the human mind is so powerfully predisposed toward order and pattern that their imposition relaxes the eye to the point where we can more comfortably see. Or perhaps in this age of digital pixellation we are simply more accustomed to viewing re-ordered and restructured interpretations of the world than we are to looking at the real thing. Either way it is clear that Ms. Davidson is a keen observer of both. Even her most abstract pieces unfailingly capture a genuine sense of place and atmosphere.

You can see more of her work at Froelick Gallery where her current show which opens tonight, will run through the end of May. You can see still more at Meyer Gallery in Park City, Utah.

Jackie K. Johnson

"Lures at Mill’s Edge"   2014   oil on canvas   48” x 60”
photo by Aaron Johanson

"Paragraphs Stand in Dance"   2014   oil on canvas   48” x 60”photo by Aaron Johanson

"Stories Off the Hip #2"   2012   oil on canvas   40.75" x 32.75"

"Thinking of Shad"   2010  oil on canvas   48.75" x 60.5"

"Stories Off the Hip #1"   2012  oil on canvas   40.75" x 32.75"

"Hand Work"  1993  clay   12" x 7.5" x 8.5"

Jackie K. Johnson has a new show of work up in May at Laura Russo Gallery in Portland, Oregon, which means I get to actually go see it. I'm not sure if I've ever seen abstract art that suggested a narrative potential to me so strongly. On the face of it, this doesn't make all that much sense. How can abstract art be narrative?

Clearly the abstraction is not complete. There are representational references, not least of which is the three dimensional modeling of the shapes, suggesting that they are not simply shapes, but things, and things have names. The human mind giddily imposes meaning on everything it absorbs. In some of the paintings I see trees and leaves, hills and waterways, and bits of architecture as if they were aerial landscapes or maps.

The reference to landscape is at times unmistakable. But they don't strike me as just any kind of map or scene, mere depictions of a place, but maps as interpretive illustration, depicting journeys or histories. Some even use the imagery of lures and bobbers to accompany the occasional fish like forms that hover cloud-like overhead, lending the pieces even more specificity to their potential interpretation. And yet they remain inscrutably, mysteriously abstract.

Some of her work is organized quite differently, suggesting a kind of arranged presentation, a still life perhaps, but still grounded in a story, like Marsden Hartley's famous "Portrait of a German Officer". The fact that they are titled "Stories off the Hip" gives me hope that my narrative reaction to the work is not so far off base. Some of her older sculptural work is more obviously representational but somehow less narrative and more purely visual. But there is a definite visual consistency between them and the paintings.

I may be way off base about the whole narrative issue but it hardly matters. At any rate, artistic intent isn't everything. Skill and a practiced hand can lead artists to accomplish things beyond their ideas, and preconception can be a restraint on creative potential. At the very least these are a hell of a lot of fun to look at. I'm looking forward to doing so in person very soon.