a cautionary tale...

Steve Driscoll. These Are Truly the Last Days.
Industrial urethane on panels, water (dyed black), wood, rock. 2016
Photo by Finn O'Hara, www.probertsongallery.com

At the entry, there is a sign. It cautions you. (A cautionary tale.) (Perhaps every art show should have one.)

It warns that the exhibit contains real water, and asks you to stay on the boardwalk and the stepping stones.

You walk into what looks and feels like a quintessentially Canadian landscape. Dark waters under night skies, a dock, some rocks. And light.

High gloss paintings that contain layers of light. Aurora and nebulae. Constellations. Each reflecting in the other; skies in waters, waters in skies. One sky in another.

Every surface implies a depth. Every light is a hole in the darkness. Star-spattered sky-fields reflect in water rippled almost imperceptibly by our breaths, our footfalls. Our existence.

The silence of the universe, and we at the centre of it; almost unnoticed. Inconsequential.

(A cautionary tale.)

Steve Driscoll. And a Dark Wind Blows.
Industrial urethane on panels, black (dyed) water, rock, wood. 2016

#stevedriscoll

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www.probertsongallery.com

literally

To take the three-dimensional world and flatten it into a two-dimensional painting,

to replace (reveal) light and shadow with colour,

to cover form with brush stroke,

to make life literally into art,

paintings literally into living, walking, breathing sculptures,

moving masks....

this is awesome!

candy colours

Wayne Thiebaud. Meringues. Oil on canvas, 1988.

An instructor once told me I painted in "candy colours." (I don't think she meant it as a compliment.) But when I look at this painting (and many others) by Wayne Thiebaud, it's the candy colours that are feeding my ravenous eyes. I can't get enough of it. Tasty if not tasteful, it is irrepressible in its celebration of the joys of the everyday. It's a party on a canvas. It contains the revelry of the entire rainbow.

And why not?

ad infinitum

Damien Hirst. Hypothalamus Acetone Powder. Household gloss on canvas.

I really can’t believe I’m writing about Damien Hirst again. A year or two ago, I didn’t even like Damien Hirst. And I’m writing about the spot paintings, of all things. What can there possibly be to say about the spot paintings?

That in them, Hirst takes visual art to the place of pure math. Each painting generated by the same parameters, the same formula. Each with slight variations on the theme: so many permutations and combinations. So much measurement, so much perfection. 

And yet they’re not static. The colours don’t stay where they are placed. They push and they pull. They pulse like irregular heartbeats, keeping the irregular tempo of our irregular lives. They throb. They become music; notes freed from the staff lines, floating on the blank white page.

They are the measured beats of poetry. They scan like a poem, in iambic pentameter maybe. Or some other longer, more random rhythmic construction, as yet unnamed. They are the structure of a free verse poem without the words. Without the meanings. Without the voice.

Ad infinitum.

Damien Hirst. Methoxyverapamil. 1991. Household gloss on canvas.

Damien Hirst. One of the spot paintings. Household gloss on canvas.

Damien Hirst. Untitled (Nick, Margot, Chris, India). 1999.
Household gloss on canvas.

Damien Hirst, spot painting.

Motoi Yamamoto, paintings

All photos are from the artist's website: http://www.motoi.biz/english/e_top/e_top.html.