New Introductions

 Okay, I did it! I made an introductory video - such an awkward thing to do, but I've heard it is nice to have. After nearly 6 tries, I captured one that I liked. So, there we go! I am finding that doing a video diary of sorts from the studio is kind of therapeutic. I am often over whelmed buy the amount of material that I am moving through in the studio in any given week, month, or season. I am starting to enjoy this as part of a routine to help me to organize and keep track of these investigations or aesthetic experiments. I have often thought that it would be great to open up the studio, to make stuff and show the process. The successes, surprises, as well as the challenges and failures. I am working alone, and am hoping that this connects with someone! So, onward! I am discovering that after the initial set up, tech failures, learning curve, and creating a digital studio amongst the clutter and creative refuse of the studio, that I think this should be able to be incorporated into my daily process, and as I continue, it is becoming more normal. The introduction in for me I suppose - this new creative space, tech included, is welcoming me to create and share. So I am, so am I. Poetics aside, this is pretty fun! Here is my first introduction video: 

Paintstew is hopping!

This week, I decided to create videos for all the works that I have in-process. It is a nice process, as I have been trying out some new hardware - the Stream Deck. After a quick set up, and some trials, I was able to create some new content for my YouTube channel.

To date, 8-9 series of works since last fall - all in various states of resolution and discovery. The process of introducing them to an audience was helpful and enlightening. I think in the end, the process of tracking these sets in this way will help me to focus and hone my process. So far, folks have been pretty receptive. I am hoping to up my production game as I make more of these. Already, I created custom thumbnails for each with my watermark! 21st Century studio here I come! Here is a recent addition:

Sketchbook inspiration from an inattentive dad

 The studio is popping this week as I found some old sketches from about 3 years ago - pre-pandemic. I found myself taking my awesome teenage children to Taekwondo 3s a week. Well, I was consistently the parent with his head in his sketchbook. The 9 x 12 sketches were compositions of ink-drawn shapes, symbols, letterforms, and abstract bubble-like forms. I think I remember at the time that I was attempting to make these drawings as I make paintings - the layering of elements. I made many of these using Rocket book: find it here as it was very convenient, and I was experimenting with cataloging sketches in my google drive. I ended up with 20-30 rectangular, vertical compositions. That was several years ago...

As it happens often in the studio, I stumble across something from the past that triggers a blast of inspiration. This is what happened, and I began transferring these small drawings on to 18 x 24, 140lb cold press watercolor paper. I always wondered what they would look like large. I had tried in the past to simply print them out large (13 x 19) but something was missing. I had the realization that maybe I should hand-reproduce them using the original images, transparencies, an overhead projector, and my favorite Molotow Blackliner pen. So, here's the first video explaining it all:

Wandering Back and Forth Through Portals

 Today, I began a approach to a series that I have begun to call "Portals". The idea has been tumbling around in my mind since my MFA Thesis work in 1999-2000 so a VERY long time. I think it is just an observation of a theme that I notice reoccurring in my work. The many works these past 20 years have all sort of orbited around a common conceptual thread. This is that I think of my paintings as passages to a viewer, through the time in my studio, to any moment when the audience notices the work. The works might be conduits of ideas, feelings, or ? that in a way transcends time/space - like small messages to future viewers, in other places. As fantasy as this sounds, I am fascinated by how my paintings function - maybe like aesthetic machines or something?

In 2020 and 2021, I began some works on paper. Those works were an exploration in present-ness and were my attempt to give-in to the process of painting that was impulsive, reactionary, and improvisational. What happened was my acceptance of the wisdom that says when you paint, you act, you react, you manifest, you work. Later, you think. I allowed my work to evolve, devolve (and sometimes destruct), as I worked daily on each piece. The series in that time were always built from multiples, 3, 4, 5, 7 works in any single exploration. In the end each piece resolved into it's own presence, that then informed me to it's larger meaning and purpose - still the concept 'portals' resonated. 

The winter of 2021 brought for me a time of reflection as do the Minnesota winter months in my studio practice. I resolved many of the works on paper and the idea/word/concept of 'portal' kept returning. So, I decided to continued the exploration using poured resin (that I was familiar with from my work in 1999-2006) to further isolate significant moments/layers in my painting process. The works in the winter/spring of 2021/2022 were all squares, 16 x 16, 12 x 12, etc. I did a series of 3 - 16 x 16, another group of 3 - 16 x 16, and a series of 4 - 12 x 12. Each of these is an exploration in space, time, and moments - yet also 'portals'.

Fast-forward to Spring 2022. I decide to embrace the idea of portals, and begin an exploration using 20" diameter x 5/8" birch plywood rounds. I am beginning the process using 10 panels, and have decided to video each step in the process. We'll see what happens! First step: getting the panels ready to paint!

Peering outward, seeing inward

This week, I am in northern WI spending some time in a cabin painting. While here for a week, I am taking much-needed time to look, to reflect, and to see. This morning as I was out for my walk, I became aware that my work over the years has always been about this moment that I was experiencing. Walking down a gravel road, looking down, hearing the birds, looking right and left - watching the forest sIowly pass me by -  one stride at a time. I was looking out - peering through the underbrush into the forest. I remember as a child, my father asking me to look into the woods as we were driving. "Look for deer' he would say, and my brother Curtis and I would look out into the forests and pasture land  of northern Minnesota or Wisconsin. We would log miles and hours looking out into the passing landscape. My father was always the best at this, spotting even the smallest movement or patch of grey-brown in the distance, the ditch, or amongst the trees. My brother and I would marvel when our father would even spot the small reflections of eyes in the ditches at night. The landscape would pass us by, and our  minds would wander - eventually to slumber in the back seat of our  Chevy Impala station wagon.

I am always looking. I enjoy peering through the forest of trees, or out toward the  passing pasturelands as I drive. I find a significant amount of happiness, and solitude when I look outward into the distance. This simple act has had a profound impact on me. I have grown to understand this simple act of looking out - has fueled most of  my artistic investigations. My paintings are for me places where I can layer up patterns and structures to create avenues and passages into depth. The gaps, negative spaces, and overlapping patterns create a mysterious environment to explore, to wander into.

My wandering into the distance- through the landscape of my native Minnesota, has helped me to realize that as I am looking outward, my mind often portages inward. The act of looking outward, is mirrored - and I have grown to rely on these self reflective moments. I seek them out, and have worked to reproduce them in my paintings over the years. These new works are mandalas about this inward/outward experience. I hope they are assemblages where someone may be compelled to look, to question, and to experience an act of visual passage.

Hidden Beneath: layers, geological time, representation, obfuscation, and discovery

I am intrigued by patterns - patterns and textures of surfaces. I find myself looking for them in our visual culture, it's as if I am excavating some glimpses of memorable textures from the visual chaos that I experience every day. I remember seeing the surfaces of billboards close-up years ago when I was a billboard painter. I remember thinking of the work that someone committed to in making a huge, hand-painted sign or billboard. Billboard imagery was created quickly, and was visible only for a short period of weeks, before being painted over by another image. The surfaces were degraded and often weathered by the seasons of my local Minnesota weather. They were the surfaces of peeling paint, flaking paper postings, half-visible letterforms, and faded colors. Sometimes the paint chips had hundreds of tiny layers of color - much like the agates of Lake Superior. I remember thinking about the time that was contained in those small colorful chips - of the moments when someone decades before painted on this surface, in this space. Occasionally, I would be surprised find a small chip with pieces of different layers chipped away, revealing some strange, surprising, combination of images. I think it was then that I became aware of the expanse of time - one part of the chip from years before, and another from just last week. I also remember adding my own story to the visual geology of the billboards, I know some of the images that I painted then, still remain hidden, somewhere. I see this work being connected to those moments. I try to work a sense of layered time into these pieces and allow the viewer to experience the archaeology of viewing a fragmented piece - and the joy of discovering some unexpected connection and meaning through the work. I hope this encourages people to imagine what came before, and what may be beneath.

5/15/2017 Artist Statement

This week, the theme of artist statement writing came up again in the Studio Coffee discussion. I thought I'd give it another try with this new work. I typically write one with every new set of paintings - then another one every 2-3 years from more of a macro point of view. These last paintings (finished Dec 2016) have really beat me up.

I have worked on these since the summer of 2014, and 3 of the 9 painting series never resolved. Each day, I reacted to what I painted the day before - building up layers over time, creating a dialog between now, and then. The work seemed most to me like a musical improvisation - one tone, rhythm, pattern, or contrast, reacting to the others. I don't think I really ever gave myself permission to paint in this way - to really paint as I would create music - I have been a musician for a long time. Part of the joy that I find in making music is in the connections that someone makes with another musician - while playing together. That dialog evolves and defines the musical passage or piece.

Since the completion (Dec 2016) of my most recent series, I see how my paintings recall for me the endless stream of images that I see on my phone, the television, media - I must see hundreds or even thousands of images in a day, a week? It occurs to me that what I am really becoming aware of is time passing. Like in a film, a sequence of images flickers past my eyes. Billboards (I was a billboard painter), ads, television, smartphone, social media, video games, selfie photos, endless list of posts, likes, and reactions inundate my perception - streaming in and stringing back, falling away from the ever changing present.

Painting in layers stops that for me - each layer a gathered fragment - each painting a collection of inter-connected moments. I recently saw some work where an artist (Jason Shulman) combined all the scenes of a film into one image - an atmospheric, time-lapse-like, single image that represented the film in a way that time was really visible in the forefront. I think that I too am developing an awareness of this compressed-time through these paintings. I wonder if all the streams of data that we are leaving behind - the pictures, posts, likes, reactions - the data of our lives, is going to be lost? I think that my work becomes a sort of visual archaeology - I find myself looking for, remembering, and reacting to these visual fragments. This dialog happens in the paintings, and I often realize that I am seeing a cloud of moments, places, glimpses, and memories.