Part of the series, Sweet Water, this imitation desert island is one of many instances throughout Southern California where artificial landscapes and environments have been built. In the course of my travels, I found places that seemed to defy both nature and reason having been transformed from desert into lush palm-tree groves, green lawns and lakes. Like the eroding Rincon Island, most of these transformations are not likely to last.
]]>I made Gauntlet while producing work for my Molten Kin show. My paintings were becoming more gothic and the colors more intense. For Gauntlet, I started by putting some pastel down on the paper, observing how the paper reacted, then put down another color and watched the colors blend together. I love to get lost in the act of making art, being in the moment. When the pastel was completed and I paused to see what was going to happen next, there was so much transformative energy there. I wanted a vessel, something to take us to the other side, moving forward fast.
]]>This image, offSET #29, New York, taken entirely out of its original context, implies its own cinematic moment. Yet the details are elusive, suspended between the artificial and the authentic.
]]>I think about the beliefs and stories that were handed down to me and I reinterpret them in my paintings. Family folklore, backyard rituals, religious sacraments, ghost stories, church, school, obedience and trust in what you're told are among my subjects. The things we're taught can be learned a thousand different ways. I like for the familiar to seem a little unfamiliar and complicated, because it is.
I look at images from the past as I work because they're heartbreaking and so haunting—what was never can be again. I mess with my imagery, layering and wearing it away until I've made a painting that makes you notice the paint as much as the pictures.
]]>Few of the Starns’ snowflakes are models of perfection, and in this they remind one of finding starfish and seashells scoured by the tides and left to dry on sandy beaches. Many have parts missing, or they have all their detailed armatures on one side but not the other. Here again, the Starns’ images exceed the aesthetic register of the catalog. Unlike industrial structures, or man-made devices, imperfection is an essential part of their beauty and poignancy…
Here is material evidence of the Starns' interest in the phenomenological character of the natural world, cast into being against the certitude of our own impermanence. The photographs speak of the fragile delicacy of our ever-warming world while being themselves a visual bulwark against despair, and they draw us, like moths to light, to the pleasures of sight that but for the camera would exceed the human eye."
Excerpt from Andy Grundberg’s introduction in alleverythingthatisyou (catalogue published by the Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden 2007)
]]>Color is very important in my paintings. It allows somewhat familiar forms to become highly personal and subtly eccentric. Also important is that the hand is evident, that my paintings are not perfect—that they stumble and falter, and reflect the joy in being human.
]]>Few of the Starns’ snowflakes are models of perfection, and in this they remind one of finding starfish and seashells scoured by the tides and left to dry on sandy beaches. Many have parts missing, or they have all their detailed armatures on one side but not the other. Here again, the Starns’ images exceed the aesthetic register of the catalog. Unlike industrial structures, or man-made devices, imperfection is an essential part of their beauty and poignancy…
Here is material evidence of the Starns' interest in the phenomenological character of the natural world, cast into being against the certitude of our own impermanence. The photographs speak of the fragile delicacy of our ever-warming world while being themselves a visual bulwark against despair, and they draw us, like moths to light, to the pleasures of sight that but for the camera would exceed the human eye."
Excerpt from Andy Grundberg’s introduction in alleverythingthatisyou (catalogue published by the Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden 2007)
]]>Recently, I've been challenging the visual vocabulary I've created and have introduced bold calligraphic and scribbled marks. They create a dramatic layer of space that thrusts forward and pushes back other elements. They allow me to detach from what I've painted before and begin anew. These new additions force me to question both my comfort level and ideas of what a painting should be.
]]>Recently, I've been challenging the visual vocabulary I've created and have introduced bold calligraphic and scribbled marks. They create a dramatic layer of space that thrusts forward and pushes back other elements. They allow me to detach from what I've painted before and begin anew. These new additions force me to question both my comfort level and ideas of what a painting should be.
]]>Setting out to photograph such places, I decided to portray them as simply as possible. Therefore the photographs are not manipulated in the darkroom or on a computer. The photographs were shot in available light if indoors, and in flat light if outside. The prints are straightforward positive reproductions taken from neutral scans of the large format negatives.
]]>Setting out to photograph such places, I decided to portray them as simply as possible. Therefore the photographs are not manipulated in the darkroom or on a computer. The photographs were shot in available light if indoors, and in flat light if outside. The prints are straightforward positive reproductions taken from neutral scans of the large format negatives.
]]>