Oil on linen, handmade frame
48 x 48
While at OU’s School of Art (Ohio University, Athens, Ohio), this was one of my earliest serious paintings. Roughly gessoed, then drawn in charcoal, gessoed again lightly to wipe and “blur” the charcoal, then illustrated the forms again offset with oil. I wanted an echoing effect, hinting at movement as well as the hidden forms beneath. It reflects some of the perspectives I was gaining in my personal life at the time, as well as some of the artists and movements that I was studying (Dubuffet’s Art Brut, Eisenman’s Deconstructionism, et al). After bouts with other methods and media over the years, this line-heavy illustrative approach is something that is still most representative of my design preferences.
The school at that time – every painting course, intro to graduate – was focused on theory and concept development and critique analysis and presentation and how you visually executed those ideas, rather than straight technical exercises. Classes were taught by significant, established, working artists, and there was no hand-holding. This major in that pure form no longer exists today at that school.
Thus, this work has great sentimental value to me as it not only reflected the times, but was created for the only painting course that I had with my (now) wife.
