|
Notes From The Underbrush These works are of flowers, just flowers, arbitrary vessels to hold an alchemy evolving over several years from the absence of image, structure and intentionally. Driscoll's previous work represented a merger of Color and shape, a free flow where three-dimensional objects protruded from a perfectly smooth surface. The effects often appeared random and contradictory. The current body of paintings is, in a manner, inverted, adopting a dense network of carved lines not unlike veins, creating stops and gullies for the viscous flow of material. The remnants of last year's work are now found in each branch, leaf and petal. The organic pattern of the carvings is in the detail. The material separates and disperses but only after careful and precise calculation. The textural surface of the painting is a terrain of color as rivers, lakes and ponds. |
|
Pipedream A pipedream is the long shot. It is a bargain fantasy raised of empty elements. In Eugene O'Neil's "The Iceman Cometh" his characters wait in anticipation and fear for the Iceman, to stave off the crushing impact of time in an environment they can no longer understand. Built upon a support of iron bars are layers of resin, loosely brushed paint, and an assemblage of cast materials. The industrial undercarriage contrasts with the imagery in the work: appropriated images from the Group of Seven. These romantic icons of a nostalgic intimacy with nature, reconstituted, fight their way to the surface through the chaos of paint drips and debris undermining and reveling the hand. The work is about argument and disruption; it is whole in general and fragmented in the particular. In approaching these pieces surrender to the familiar, and allow it to guide you in their unraveling. As in Kafka's world, what we can know is disjointed and becomes only vaguely recognizable, pinned against the steel of an overwhelming authority. It is within this structure that the individual eventually succumbs to despair and begins to create his pipedreams. But the vocabulary has been determined and the artist is neither free nor able. He is a haphazard scavenger of tradition and technology, where each clumsily present each other in the service of some new question. |
|
Not on the floor, please. We are generally limited by connotations, symbols, imagery and juxtaposition. As mere facilitators, perhaps, we can more effectively create dialog. A main interest within the work is the interaction of the material. Its innate form compromises the historical illusionism of paint, replacing it with its own physicality, a presence of depth and surface. Urethane is a material commonly used as floor finishing. "Not on the floor, please" relocates it to the wall. Wire mesh is an armature supporting the urethane in its liquid form and freezing it in time. A method closer to sculpture rather than painting. The process begins with minimal intervention as the material flows freely over the wire mesh deciding both form and direction. In the initial pour, is its completion. It is falling that informs our involvement. The work defines itself. A byproduct of this free pour has been referenced to geographic land masses and weather movement. More important however is the dispersal itself. The actual and not a reference. |
|
Triptych In my work I investigate abstraction as it moves toward the threshold of representation. I treat the physicality of the paint as though it were the emotion itself. Upon exhaustion I let the work sit. This fallow period allows a more critical and reflective return to the canvas. A condition of re-examination and question of self and work. White is introduced as editor, in an attempt at keeping only what is necessary. Sections are built and collapsed, leaving each layer partially visible, tracking the narrative. Brush strokes are emphasized as evidence of the building process. Rips, tears and cut-outs bind the relationship between the work and state of mind. The insertion of decidedly placed wooden blocks affirm a persistent, unyielding refusal. The contradiction of foreign objects act as anchors, three dimensional focal points, question the relevance of my intent. A metaphor for misunderstanding. |