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STATEMENT OF WORK
Living in New York in the late 1990's I saw Brice Marden's early layered paintings of curved brush strokes. In these paintings Marden created a shallow space both literal and illusionistic. Then I saw Terry Winters doing a similar thing. And there was Gerhardt Richter's early large layered and peeled away abstract paintings which asked the viewer to look under the layers and "into" the painting. Moving to Berkeley I wanted to create a physical layered space. My material was an oil wax resin mixture similar to oil pastels. First I heated and liquified the mixture. Then I poured it into a shallow mold. Drying, that gave me a 1/2"x4"x8" block of material. I peeled off strands of this material and applied the strands, pliable and sticky, to the surface of the "painting". This material hardens as it continues to dry. Gradually I started to leave space between the strands. As the space got deeper, the challenge was to get the right density of space while at the same time placing the strands so that the viewer is able to see into that space. I started using color to draw the eye of the viewer into the space.
In the diptychs I juxtapose an impenetrable surface on the right--either a 5/8" slab or a solid block of the oil wax resin material--with the interior space on the left. The slab or block of material is made by pouring the liquid mixture into a much larger mold. Out of the mold, the cooled solidified surface of the slab or block is left untouched. On the left, the strands of the same material are placed to create a space that allows the viewer to look into the space. The strands are then painted to match the surface on the right. The viewer can now compare the visual experience of the eye being stopped by an impenetrable surface on the right or allowed to enter the space under the surface on the left.
In these diptychs, on the left I have used silver paint to paint the deepest strands to draw the eye under the surface. On the right bits of the silver paint included in the heated mixture can be seen on the surface of the slab or block.