ICE 2016
Julie Nester Gallery
February 26th - March 27th
Park City, Utah
I have a deep sensory memory from my childhood, that slightly vulnerable feeling of sliding over a slippery surface of ice, the cold making me feel alive. This memory is but the starting point, then the studio painting takes on a life of its own. The work that unfolds has a power and an evolution and doesn’t necessarily stay with the original thought.
I invite figures from my references into the experience so that the paintings become not just about my personal story. It’s what authors say about writing their fiction; they end up following their characters. In painting a crowd certain figures are more intriguing and, over time, the others seem to fall away. Because these are paintings, which are visual before they are narrative, this inquiry often has to do with the shapes they make, the spaces between them, the light and shadow.
It is like I have a cast of characters that show up every night. They come from different stories and times and meet in my studio and together we build other stories than the ones they came in with. They fall out of time and space and re-order into something new.
The pace of the activity I am depicting (in Ice) is part of the harmonic resonance. In the past I have painted people standing with almost no movement and I have painted figures dancing, moving slowly. Now, the rhythm of sliding across the ice, which is often standing still yet moving, resonates within me.
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