Tractors in the Landscape: Upstate New York

Traveling to Camp Pocket Utopia on Amtrak, I witnessed numerous construction sites. Typically the machines were at rest--lending an air of mystery to the upheaval that lay still as the train sped past. This conjured memories of driving from New York to Florida, when I painted toy tractors amidst gestures and splats to demarcate space and light. Later, in China, this work by Gui Xing took one step further: building a tractor from gestures. Here, two tractors in honor of the construction that surrounds us on the road.

What is considered “ink” painting? A conversation with Liang Quan

Click on link to read how Liang Quan references Chinese scrolls. The below footnote from the interview describes the way I think about and approach pictorial space in my work.

*Notes on the Southern School of Chinese landscape painting.
During the Ming dynasty (1555 – 1636), the theory of the Southern School of painting emerged in association with the concepts of Southern Chan (Zen) Buddhism. The artists of the Southern school are associated with the Buddhist concept of the individual self as the key to sudden and intuitive enlightenment. Their approach to the creative process of painting and the styles they adopted emphasized on direct personal experience. Paintings in the Southern style place importance on the development of a kind of abstract space, where there is no emphasis on layering or depth, and have largely influenced subsequent Chinese painting history.

Amanda Church Reviews my Dorsch Gallery exhibition Walkabout in ArtPapers 34:04

Click on link to view installation photos of Walkabout. I have also written about the ideas behind developing Walkabout in previous posts, archived January - March 2010 on this blog.