THE SHORT TAKE: Work on the new BLACK WINTER EXTRAPOLATION pieces continues in the face of everything. These negative variants emerge in organic sequence from the earlier WINTER EXTRAPOLATIONS presented in my EXTRAPOLATIONS & COMMENTARY solo exhibit at the Front Gallery this past July. Acrylic on gessoed unfolded brown paper bag; they’re not yet oil but could be. Once again the question surfaces – is this a committed, purposeful coarseness responding to larger realities or does the use of this medium persist from less exalted impulses? Will let that remain unanswered for now. (…continued in THE LONG READ below images)
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THE LONG READ:White lines on black field – how different, how much more difficult for some reason to follow, to translate than the black on white. White line on black field reading as a negative bucks full comprehension. (Although white chalk on black slate was easy enough when we were children). I segue into black lines on black field.
Took a close-up and flipped it digitally, negative to positive, white line to black… instantly reverting in my gaze to something familiar, simple to read! So why do white on black? To further challenge the eye, the taste of struggle making truths attained sweeter, more significant?
These linear analyses can be tough. Yet I persist. Why? Thinking of Giacometti’s brilliant effort to pin down structure and define spirit with his ever-seeking lines of grey paint! Or Mondrian’s mid-career work, distilling form and shape through linear description of edge and intersection…
Why did they do this? Why do I do this? It’s a search for some kind of truth – concentrated, reduced to essentials. If one can visually comprehend structure, that comprehension somehow brings us to an intimacy with something deep and large.
How is this searching for definition any different than when I painted the figure – or cityscapes or interiors, for that matter? The same analysis of structure propelled the work process completely.
Yet parallel with my earlier search for visual structure was the use of object as subject, resulting in narrative and the expounding of social and political truths. I had a lot to say. Still do. Eventually however, it seemed I was done with the need to present these narratives in paint. There is the written word for that.
What remains at the core of painting, what continues to present itself as ever-elusive is the resolution of visual truth.
Diane Sophrin 