Believable Space

During the early 1970’s I started investigating ideas in my painting which would create a pictorial space with multiple perspectival points of view. I wanted to find a way to introduce a non specific narrative to abstraction. These shifting view points would direct the viewer’s gaze, creating a hierarchy of meaning that could shift and re-combine.

In earlier work the forms in my paintings were geometric, and the drawing, color choices, and size of the format made the paintings feel like they were in a place that existed somewhere between architectural and human scale. The complex space had attributes of both volume and flatness. The color was “non-determinable,” made from layers of colors that were perceived as optically mixed. The interaction of this shifting space, color and scale, as well as the large horizontal format (some of the paintings were 6’x24’) made the paintings have a “slow time,” a breathing presence, that was unexpected from the large geometry. Also the large horizontality forced the viewer to “read” the paintings from left to right and back again, somewhat like a processional painting.

In the 1980’s I began incorporating other forms and images into my paintings which pushed them into a realm that existed between landscape, mapping, and abstraction. Along with the idea of slow time in the reading of the painting, which for me made it more experiential, I wanted to chart a different time based geologic story in each painting which could only exist in deep time. I was also interested in how different cultures represented “reality,” visual information, and mapped ideas. I incorporated methods of modeling, diagramming, mapping symbols and charting information into the work. I didn’t want the paintings to look overwhelmed by the conceptions. I wanted them to have a seeming ease in how everything interacted, and also exist within a phenomena of naturalistic light.

For example, in relation to geological structures, in one part of a painting a shift or fault would alter the landscape, and in another area water that would have been there millions of years earlier would have left a deep canyon. These elements appearing coherently in the same painting create a new landscape, a narrative creation story, an image that looks experientially like a place, and color and light that feels like an actual phenomenon, sometimes even representing a time of day. Sedimentary structures, desiccation, cross-cutting relationships, alternately wet and dry environments create sequences that narrate the story of a place over “deep time.”

Some of my paintings are 8 foot tall canvases, 4’4” wide, and their verticality pulls the viewer up into the space. I have used multiple viewpoints to slow down this force and make the viewer read the paintings. In the 10 to 15 inch by 8 to 10 foot horizontal works I am trying to make the paintings read simultaneously as object and panorama. The color in the paintings involves ideas of local, atmospheric, and abstract color. I want to make natural light as a phenomenon, and abstract color act as light and location in the same painting , creating a believable space and experience that could never have existed in any other way.