January 26 – February 23, 2018
Artist Lecture: Friday, January 26, 12 PM
Room 108, Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center
Three Rivers College 2080 Three Rivers Boulevard Poplar Bluff, MO 63901
Artist Statement:
The solo exhibit, Generative Conversations: Selected Works From Four Series, employs both an analog and algorithm generation of imagery that spans several years. The intent of the exhibit is to show how an artist’s work both grows and remains united over time. These works reference each other, pull forward working methodologies and visual language, as well as leapfrog over each other from intuitive mark making to analytical generative constructs. 100 Thoughts and Instances reflect intuitive, introspective marks, colors and textures. Iterations and Arc Constructs are, by contrast, analytical and prescriptive.
The conversations of methodology, materials, and rationale are synthesized from each series and carried forward with new goals. Universal to all series is the specific use of the “mark.” The unique representation of velocity and intention as materials interact with thought. The energy of the mark, as created by the fingers, wrist, arm, and body captures dynamism, direction, texture, and intent.
100 Thoughts, a 2009-2010 series originally conceived and executed as 100 small images,
Berries I
was concerned with the internal emotional landscape. Thoughts and emotions were pared down to a single essential idea and set of painterly marks that focused on a specific feeling or intention. Encaustic paintings with oil stick, imagery are about 4″ x 4″ on 5.5” x 6 Fabriano Artistico, framed 20″x10.5″x1″. Blog post. https://sisleyblinn.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/new-work-100-thoughts/
The 2012-2013 Iterations series explores emergent forms evolving in shape, texture and spatial distribution: transformations of line, color, space, and formal interrelationships. The imagery transmutes and reconstructs associations,
“Iterations: #821.” Encaustic and Oil Stick on Cradled Panel. 36″ x 36″ 2″ 2012
straddles the states of structure and chaos, decorative and gritty, and digital mechanical replication and the authentic unique mark of the artist’s hand. The resulting imagery evokes an energized, meditative experience.
From one encaustic painting with dry point and oil stick figuration, Rondo Weaver: Lavender Blue, 2009, almost 6000 digital derivations were generated. These digital renderings served as references to create a new series of hand worked paintings. Imagery was created in a fluid color space using under-paintings of glowing washes, grunge-surfaced tattoo-like digital layers, incised drypoint line work with Intaglio-like inking with subtle surface modulations and gestural marks.
Where 100 Thoughts was concerned with internal influences, Instances, a 2016 series,
Silence Lost
pulls forward this minimalist approach of essential visual language to reveal visceral reactions to external, daily encounters. Encounters may selectively hit a nerve, or work in combination to provoke a response: verbal, physical, visual moments translated into painterly mass, velocity, color and texture. Instances reaches back and pulls forward imagery formulation from 100 Thoughts, a 2009 series. Encaustic paintings with oil stick on handmade paper, imagery 18″x18″ on 22″x30 Fabriano Artistico, framed 28″x28″x2″.
Quotes from the blog post (https://sisleyblinn.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/instances-a-new-2016-series/):
- “These pieces are color and texture explosions-energy captured in
containers of rectilinear form.” - “I’m intentionally not trying for the perfect calligraphic mark.
Instead, blunt, ungracious blasts of paint off rough bristle brushes
move over the surface on their own trajectories, for their own purposes.”
In both cases of 100 Thoughts and Instances, the reductive, primal expressions represent the essence of what is left from an encounter once the superficial and knowable is stripped away. By removing recognizable elements, what remains are responsive, experiential marks. The enigmatic feeling of an encounter made visual.
The ongoing series, Arc Constructs, started in 2017, shares the spontaneous mark making and reductive imagery of 100 Thoughts and Instances, and further explores the generative imagery
Arc Constructs: Dan
development cycle of Iterations. Taking one further step, the imagery of the calligraphic mark has been liberated from the picture plane into low relief sculptural space. The marks of previous series have been enlarged and codified, given specific modular forms while retaining an energetic surface. There are four distinct size shapes currently in the series that are assembled modularly into related constructs. These modular units will be used to generate an extended series. Related imagery is under development for prints, monoprints and paintings.
WordPress:https://sisleyblinn.wordpress.com/
Instagram: @sisleyblinn
Sisley-Blinn 