Happy New Year, Art Worldies

Love and light to you in 2010

Making the Magic of Painting, One Piece of Paint at a Time: Margie Livingston at Greg Kucera

How much space is a painting allowed to take up? is the question that was raised for me as I walked through Margie Livingston‘s show at Greg Kucera. Walking through is what you do in this show. The space of these paintings is the gallery space, and you are a part of it. The “paintings” are on the wall, or stacked in thin lines, or suspended from the ceiling. Margie has turned the content of her paintings inside out, exposing her painting process as living, changing, and sculptural.

Paint line (Detail), 2009, Acrylic and steel cable, 2.5 x 2.5 x 192 inches

Large drape, 2009, Acrylic, stainless steel wire and monofilament, 90 x 90 x 90 inches

Her dedication to painting is lovingly evident in the labor of the sculptures, which are made of paint. By painstakingly stacking dried blobs of acrylic from floor to ceiling, she makes a painted line– one that would have taken two seconds to make with wet paint on a surface. Through an elaborate system of wires hanging from the ceiling, she wills a web of elastic white paint to assert itself against gravity, encouraging it to take up space. It’s as though the paint has been forced from the canvas into “room air” and must now be on life support in order to survive. In her hands, and in this space, it’s not only surviving– it’s thriving.

Big yellow, 2009, Oil on linen, 90 x 66 inches

Me + You + December

I usually put stuff about my own work on my other blog, but right now there are several things happening that I’d like to invite you to.

Right NOW – December 11th:

The ownership of my piñata is up for grabs for Strangercrombie.

December 11th:

Matt Offenbacher and Margie Livingston have invited me and about 30 other painters to talk for five minutes each at The Henry about paintings we love right now. It’s a “Seattle Painters Mini-Symposium” because “painting is awesome, interesting, central to contemporary art discourse, and we’re doing it here in Seattle.” Let’s talk about Painting!

{left to right, top to bottom; some of the participating painters: Margie Livingston, Joey Veltkamp, Ken Kelly, Kimberly Trowbridge, Nicholas Nyland, Matt Offenbacher, Eric Elliott, Susanna Bluhm, Robert Hardgrave}

December 12th:

I’m opening my studio in Georgetown during the Georgetown Art Attack. Come see my new paintings and have some cookies!