You’ve likely been told at some point, “Go on up that way, then round that corner and down a bit, and you’ll find it.” More straight-forward instructions do not exist to get you some places. I’ll try though, to give you a sense of the Creel-Harrison Gallery at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta, Ga. Once inside the main building, forego the main galleries and head up the beautiful elliptical staircase to the third floor. Make your way to the back window, by-passing the large inviting gallery spaces off the landing. Turn right down a short hallway, moving past an ancient elevator and bathroom and you’ll find a room tucked away like a burrow; an intimate little cozy space.
I got word in early 2016 that I would be able to have an exhibition in the Creel-Harrison Gallery. Honestly, this was the most exciting opportunity to hang my art that I’d ever received. I decided to create a body of work specifically for the space. Despite it being the farthest gallery from the front door and not always easily discoverable, I relished it being a destination with a built-in journey of sorts. I went into the room and measured all the walls, height of the fireplace, and length of the hallway, and got to work.
Seven panels were designed to proportionally fit into the gallery on particular walls. Their sizes were also proportional to one another. Once constructed and primed white, I applied a raucous maelstrom of black brushwork onto each panel without reaching the edges. This was the unifying ground for all of the pieces: a darkened mess.
As these paintings developed over a few months, I employed variety of creative approaches. It was not intentional at the time to vary my approach. I simply considered each piece individually as I went along. The first to get started was the widely horizontal piece designed to fit above the fireplace in the gallery. It was conceived in an instant. It just made sense to have a glowing beam reside in that shape. The end product had a resonance to it. The ‘beam’ wasn’t there; it was a cumulative presence resulting from the many brushstrokes tapered alongside one another. It set the tone for the remaining work to be created.
The next three started all around one another. The large square was arrived at by tinkering with an image in my mind and turning it over and over while trying to go to sleep at night. Eventually it came to have a radiograph-like form, though still with some solidity. The large vertical piece collected numerous attempts to fill the space with imagery including words, sweeping lines, and layering. Each pass seemed to be lacking something which had been established with the first two pieces. Attempt after painted-over attempt led to the stark, hard-edged shape winning out; the dark background became more thoroughly black. The large horizontal piece offered seven openings in a cascading lightness over the chaotic darkness; this was a curious hunch which became the most sublime piece in the series to me. It also the only piece to have the ‘light’ occupy the space outside of the darkness.
The final piece to get started was the triptych. It embodies the experience of my overall process, from initial idea to planning to implementation to plateau to plummet to resolution. The quickening of that timing as the end of the creative process arrives was represented in the proportional decreasing in width of each piece, and the proportional spacing between the three pieces.
A major aspect of these paintings which immediately set them apart from previous work was that for the previous 20 years or so, I had avoided using black paint. Going into this series was different. The ground itself felt right in being dark and black. And its application being chaotic and bustling set the stage for the next application of brushwork to be orderly. It also seemed balancing to stick with subtle shades of white.
I spent the better part of four months completing the paintings. They nestled in like a handful of fresh eggs when hung in the Creel-Harrison Gallery. And with that, they were ready for the public. Part of this particular body of work was rooted in the viewer’s experience of the work. (To be honest, this was only a couple of years into my considering what the viewers experienced.) These pieces were some of the first to receive a treatment of creating familiar-novelty. I worked the paintings into a presentation of near recognizable images which eluded distinct classification. The too-often-seen becomes rote and superficial; the too-odd is a far stretch for accessibility and comfort. To me, the form which exists in the liminal space of the gloaming feels embedded with possibilities of intrigue.
While working on the series, I was developing imagery which resonated with a sense of journey. Framing discovery, presenting the found, documenting the process. Seeking in the darkness with marks of light harkened to a primordial call-and-response, creating a prima materia on which to build the forms. In this, I felt I was creating a personal alchemy. Once exhibited, responses from viewers amounted to a fresh reminder of things known. My favorite response was that it made the observer think of “echoes of knowledge in a cave”. I thought that was apt.
Check out all of the paintings in the ‘alchemy Gallery’.