ARTIST STATEMENT
My current work consists of
watercolor paintings of dramatized life and death struggles taking place in and around my studio. The heroes and victims in these scenarios are miniscule –
insects mostly – and the scenes in which I depict them are fictionalized tableaux that suggest decisive moments involving impending annihilation. Continuing my ongoing concerns with
mortality,
fragility, memory and
desire, these images also nudge into a new direction the ironic-Romantic impulses that have driven my previous work for the past decade. Each of the subjects of these paintings appears vastly magnified on a starkly empty stage, often with melodramatic lighting fading into nothingness in the distance. The fact that the players in many of these staged existential dramas are mere bugs does not detract from their modest grandeur (or mock schmaltz, if you prefer). In fact, the scale of these paintings is such that a wealth of normally hidden detail is revealed. Who knew, for instance, that the jointed armor of an ordinary sowbug resembles highly polished marble in bright light? Or that the iridescent wings of a mosquito are fringed all around with long, fine hairs like eyelashes? Derived from my own photographs of the fauna "native" to my studio and adjacent outdoor work space, these pictures reveal the hidden beauty and potential pathos of a world that is all too often overlooked -- that is, when it is not being inadvertently crushed underfoot.
Watercolor has a reputation as a medium given to splashy spontaneity, yet these paintings are carefully planned and tightly rendered in intricate detail, with photographic blurring and vignetting simulated for an almost comically heightened dramatic effect. Yet the unpredictable nature of the medium still manages to prevent the result from being entirely photo-realistic -- subtle textures, paint blooms and stain borders add visual interest at close range that would be lacking in a photograph. The inherent fragility of works on paper appropriately echoes the perishable character of my subjects. Some of these subjects stand on or scuttle across a paper landscape bearing enormous handwritten phrases, like an enlarged view of a diary entry or letter in progress, but the limited depth of field and range of vision at this bug’s eye level is inevitably too narrow to allow us to read more than fragmentary thoughts from the text’s anonymous and inscrutable author. Many of the works’ titles seem to provide similar clues to complement the implied narrative, but, as often, multiple and playfully contradictory meanings are suggested.
Much of my work to date has been concerned with moments of heightened awareness, moments that seem to resonate with significance, like those one experiences in an epiphany, déjà vu, or even an encounter with great
ART or literature. Another similar sensation is that familiar existential vertigo -- the fleeting yet giddy intensity of a moment brought into excruciating focus by a suddenly awakened awareness of life’s precariousness and its brief duration. Like the freezing moth in "Snowy," like the crumpled mosquito in "Sorry," like the sowbug fleeing the roving magnifying glass in "Safe," our ultimate fate may depend on cruel or indifferent forces largely beyond our control. But rather than stepping back for perspective on this intolerable truth, these works step forward, to peer closely at the minute inhabitants of the corners and cracks in my own art practice.
Paul Pitsker, February 1, 2006
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