On and of the Mesa :: Johnnie Winona Ross, Carole Sue Ross

“Of all the memberships we identify ourselves by the one thing that is most forgotten, and that has the greatest potential... is place. We must learn to know, love, and join our place even more than we love our own ideas.” 

                                                                                                               -Wendell Berry

Snow Canyon, Utah         

As artists, and writers, I think we do carry within ourselves a sense of place that uniquely defines us and grounds us to our lives; a point of reference, perhaps, that allows for meaning and the opportunity of personal being -- within the larger grasp of the more impersonal world. Perhaps 'place' is as simple as a response to a certain area or geographic region, or a more spiritual embodiment within our hearts and minds.

It may not always be easy to recognize our need to have a sense of place, to connect to it, or even to learn to trust our instinctive desire to seek it out. As artists, and writers, our course so often leads to no discernable plateau of worth, or even sensibility, when we pit ourselves against contemporary norms of material success. Surely, our strength lies within our hearts and souls.

Johnnie Winona Ross, Carole Sue Ross      Southwestern Gothic           Arroyo Seco, NM    

It's impossible to talk about a sense of place in regard to contemporary art without thinking of my friends, Johnnie Winona Ross and his wife, Carole Sue Ross. Moving their lives and practices after many years in northern New England to the southwest United States, has allowed them  to connect to a deeper sense of home, and work. They say they will never leave.

      PocoCasa, Arroyo Seco, New Mexico

They built their house, PocoCasa, and workplace, Dry Creek Studios, in the austere landscape of northern New Mexico's high plain. They make non-objective art that is derivative of the nature that surrounds them, and rich in an essence of the cultural history of the native lands and people. 'Place' is visible in the choices they have made as life partners, as stewards of the fragile southwestern environs which they have come to love and as artists -- their life and their work, has everything to do with spirituality, and heart.

        Dry Creek Studio                “It’s like light in a cathedral…”

Set apart from their house, Dry Creek Studio is a sweeping, cantilevered structure with clerestory windows that open to all four directions, the largest facing north and south. The building is divided into two separate studios: Johnnie’s faces east, toward Taos Mountain, and Carole Sue’s faces west, toward Pedernal Mountain -- mountains often painted by Georgia O’Keeffe. Separate doorways and porches keep the spaces individual and private.

                                           PocoCasa

Carole Sue Ross’s studio features shelves and tables to hold her hand-built, polished and smoked vessels which when finished, are mounted  on a simple white shelf. “I want them to look contemporary but have an ancient feel”. Carole designs and nurtures PocoCasa’s beautiful gardens and plantings of fruit trees, sage, chamiso, juniper, aspen and pine. Flagstone walkways connect the buildings and wind around terraces and a ramada. Acacias border a seasonal pond where birds nest.

                                               Johnnie Winona Ross at Dry Creek Studio
Johnnie Winona Ross
Johnnie Winona Ross is very interested in the nature of painting, and in process. His vocabulary is rich in paradoxical components that imbue his quiet, pristine surfaces with a tension of both chance and structure. I am very moved by this. They are strong, yet personal; formalistic, yet profoundly spiritual.

"....I look for the feeling that being in the landscape gives me, a feeling at the small of my back when I see something beautiful and consider it sacred. That's what I go for in my work, and I try to achieve that by keeping things minimal, almost meditative."     -Johnnie Winona Ross

Johnnie Winona Ross  Black Creek Seeps, 2009 acrylic burnished on linen, 36x34.5 inches

Indeed… Traces of viscous pigment flow vertically from top to bottom, scraped back layer upon layer, to be held eventually by luminously white horizontal bands. Ross’s paintings are firmly grounded, yet, they float between opaqueness and translucency.

The process of painting, scraping and repainting establishes a subliminal dynamic between counteractive elements --presence/absence, structure/freedom, resistance/release, richness/ austerity -- so that the painting itself becomes an elegant and sensuously integrated expression of oppositions. The viewer is quietly entranced by the purity of form, light and the suggestion of what lies beneath; the artists’ process, his hand.

"....Repeating the mark, or the drip, scraping, burnishing, builds a physical history within the painting …… when you see worn stone steps, whether at an Anasazi site, or the Met, it is interesting to consider the scores of people that have used or are using the steps in roughly the same way; or seeing the keys on an old piano, worn with use. You realize that you are just part of the stream of history, a large or small part, but you are only  moving  through.”         
                                                                                                                           - Johnnie Winona Ross

 

Dry Creek Studio 2009

Ross is a consummate painter. His depth of experience is clear, from start to finish of each piece, as all aspects of his creative process bear the same touch. From his preferences for particular substrate materials, to the final, meticulous polishing of surface with a traditional burnishing stone of native Pueblo potters, Ross approaches all with the same integrity and sensitivity.

"... There is a beauty in that a craft, a care, are conscience decisions being made that maybe help one to be aware of the possibility…. that the overall effect of the painting somehow transcends the everyday physical world... (This) is a philosophical choice...."
                                                                                                                    -Johnnie Winona Ross

Johnnie Winona Ross                                                           James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe

Ross exhibits regularly in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, and throughout Northern New Mexico. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Gottlieb Foundation Support Grant. His work can be seen at The Stephen Haller Gallery, New York, James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe; Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque; Barry Whistler Galley, Dallas. He also works with Tamarind Prints and Santa Fe Editions, and has a beautiful book out, Johnnie Winona Ross, published by by Radius Books in Santa Fe, foreword by Douglas Dreishpoon and essay by Carter Ratcliff. 

 

         Dry Creek Studio

“Nature informs my work. I spent so many years working in a place that I didn't respond to, thinking it didn't really matter much. I lived in Maine; I was in NYC a lot. I found I was traveling to the Southwest every chance that I got. The light, the culture, the archeology, the desert, mountains. It was austere, real, exposed, but mysterious; it was not a casual place that you just were.

"It was spiritual to experience a rock art panel that was 2000-5000 years old, that is more affecting then any piece of art that I’ve ever seen. In 1994, I spent another year on grant at Roswell, my work really solidified, it wasn't like it really changed, it just became more powerful, it began to have that feeling of 'experiencing the rock art panel', or 'experiencing the desert', it became still, real, and a unique experience. My studio has 12' glass doors that face a 13,000' mountain, to one side of that is Taos Mountain, the sacred mountain. It is an unobstructed view. That view feeds me, every time that I look up.”

                                 Carole Sue Ross Tilting Series 2008, Stoneware, Pit-Fired

Carole Sue Ross
Inspired by the exceptional quality of light and the open horizon of the land, Carole Sue Ross creates delicate smoke-fired ceramic vessels that rely on gravity, balance and weight. She molds the shallow clay pots by hand and fires them with eucalyptus wood or sage to color the surfaces. Her finished pieces are cohesive, visual groupings of these beautiful vessels, each taking into consideration the color, size, and direction of their respective tilting.

                                                                              Carole Sue Ross             Vessel  detail

"I create work that relies on gravity, balance and weight which also contains similarities and contrasts. …The process involves a traditional way of forming the clay in direct sunlight. After the walls are manipulated to their thinnest state, I scrape and carve the exterior to form an organic-like open vessel. The clay pieces are created as sculpture, without a traditional foot which allows gravity to determine how each rests on the shelf.”

                                          Carole Sue Ross  at Cafe Loka

I am very attracted to the fluent color transition from within the vessels that radiates throughout the space that surrounds them. Color, for this reason, as well as the sensitive form, seems central in the luminous quality and consistency of these small, responsive pieces.

                                            Carole Sue Ross   Untitled Series    2008, Stoneware, Pit-fired

"After the initial forming, many layers of terra sigillata are applied. This mixture both seals and leaves the work with a satin smoothness and iridescent finish. The system of working is reminiscent of the process used by early Pueblo people going back to the eighth century.

“After bisquing, pieces are fired numerous times in a pit. Depending on the combustibles used -- eucalyptus, sage, seeds -- the resulting smoked areas ad patterns are both spontaneous and controlled."

                                           Carole Sue Ross   Tilting Series #5,   2008, Stoneware, Pit-fired
Carole Sue Ross’s work can be seen at Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ.  You may run into her work at Cafe Loka in Taos, New Mexico. 

.... finally reuniting their hearts and being, Johnnie Winona Ross and Carole Sue Ross achieve work that has a glowing meditative presence, that reveals the austerity and subtlety of the desert landscape reduced to its experience; of mystical aura and natural formal beauty.... 

Must be the Land of Enchantment….


Thanks Johnnie,
Thanks Carole Sue

Sight Lines :: Fiona Robinson, Mary Judge

Fiona Robinson    There and Back,    Acrylic, Oil, Charcoal on Canvas, 2006: 90x70cms

For me, the pairing of these two artists has been instinctive, yet also a bit unfocused. I discovered, though, that although their techniques and expression vary considerably, they embrace a manifestation of life commonly, through line and through the earth;  a human grounding of time and memory; history in the most profound sense.


Fiona Robinson
Fiona Robinson is an artist living and working in Weymouth - Dorset, England -- a seaport village 140 miles southeast of London, and 140 miles northwest of Cornwall. Several years ago, we connected through the Drawing Research Network, an organization based in the UK, comprised of individuals and institutions who are in some way involved in the research of drawing.  We began a professional dialogue across these many miles which has resulted in a deep, professional respect, but also developed into a wonderful friendship.

Fiona Robinson      Circular Walk 6, from The Journey Sequence, Pencil on Paper, 2007: 70x50cms

"The Circular Walk series refers to a walk accompanying a fellow artist on a route of her choice across the moor land of West Penwith between the parishes of Morvah and Madron. We started near Bosullow, walked up and over Watch Croft, joined the footpath to Nine Maidens Stone Circle, more accurately, the Boskednan Stone Circle and back to the beginning. Walking around stone circles within a circular walk became a series of circles within circles. Between the beginning and the end there is only uncertainty, explores the idea that nothing repeated can ever be the same. Any journey, however great, however small, has two certainties, a beginning and an end; it is what happens in between that has potential."

Fiona's abstract drawing sequences are conceptual journeyings through chosen and intimately felt landscape; collective records of experience pertaining to time and space, physical meanderings and memory. Her soft tonal surfaces, on paper and canvas, are saturated with layer upon layer of spontaneous line --  traversing the plane in fits and stops of transition -- sometimes smooth, often broken, only to resume its pace again, renewed, perhaps, by possibilites of destination and of return.

Fiona Robinson    Journey Sequence 2007 installation , New Greenham Arts, UK

In 2007, Fiona won the University of Bath Painting Prize, UK, and was a Prizewinner at the 4th International Drawing Biennale, Melbourne, Australia.  She is also a recipient of the Proof Magazine Brabcombe Award, UK and the Indigo Arts Prize, Liverpool, UK.  She has been an invited artist at the International Drawing Biennale in Kosovo 2008, and was selected for the the Vth International Drawing Biennale, Pilsen 2006, Czech Republic. Recent shows include Lineweight at TSU Art Gallery, Missouri USA; Drawing Room II, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol UK; Transition at Rougemont Castle Exeter, UK and the Oxo Tower, London, UK.  She has been awarded residencies at Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall, UK; The Cill Rialaig Project, Co.Kerry, Ireland; and is a 2010 Recipient of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship Award, Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Fiona Robinson      Opposite Ends of a Possible Path,       Oil, Charcoal on Canvas, 2002: 122x154cms: University of Bath Collection

"Opposite Ends of a Possible Path became about possibilities. A record of the memory of a walk over the hills above Upwey near Weymouth, it had been done many times but the painting specifically acknowledges that each time it is different. The lines are infinite variations of the route taken, preserved in a film of paint. It is about how memory fades as time elapses. In the painting the physicality of the line pales becoming a distant echo of earlier layers. Because of the organisation of space within the painting the route appears to change as the viewers move from one position to another. The work embraces the idea of mutability and variation. In it’s combining of paint and charcoal it deliberately overlaps the techniques of painting and drawing."

Fiona's drawings have been referred to as "documentary movement within interpretive space", "investigative, emotional topography", and "collective geographical meanderings". To me, they are elegant renderings of a heartfelt life and brilliant mind.  They are exquisitely sensitve and beautiful, attributes difficult to share in this venue, perhaps, but I attest to this personally as I am lucky enough  to have one....

In her own words:

"My work is about journeys and memory; journeys through spaces, through time and through memory. They are rooted in place but often exist only in memory. My father was born in Cork in Ireland in 1913 and one of his earliest memories, probably before 1920, was being taken to Kerry on the back of a cart to a family wake. The journey took three days, some of it on unmade roads, through a landscape that was wild and inhospitable. In 2008 I travelled to Kerry, to take up a residency as part of the Cill Rialaig Project in the Ballinskelligs. The roads are better now but it is still a wild landscape. The restored buildings of Cill Rialaig were once home to the family of Séan Ó’Connail, an illiterate Irish-speaking storyteller who was part of the oral tradition. He never left this peninsular but in retelling the stories brought to him by other travellers he journeyed, in his imagination, further than many people do in reality.

Fiona Robinson     A Love Affair with the Irish Landscape: From Ballinskelligs Beach to Bolus Head     Triptych, Pencil on Paper, 200x340cms, 2009

A love affair with the Irish Landscape follows a remembered journey from the ruins of an ancient Abbey, sitting perilously close to the encroaching sea, on Ballinkelligs beach, along winding lanes, past Cill Rialaig up to the top of Bolus Head. From this vantage point you can see the Skelligs, two outcrops of rock eight miles out to sea, on one of which is the remains of a sixth century monastery. The monks who lived there then were living on the edge of the known world, looking out over the Atlantic they were staring into the abyss. Each retelling of a story, each repeated journey, each new layer of drawing is different. This work is part of a continuum connecting me to the memories of all those other journeys through these spaces."

Fiona Robinson   Transition 3  (detail)   Drawing 5. 180 x 120 cm pencil on paper   2009 

"Curated jointly by Exeter Artspace and Rita Parente of submit2gravity London, this project is in response to the prison cells underneath Rougemont Castle in Exeter. My drawings  were installed in the holding cells under the castle which measure 6′ x 3′ and are a response to the space, or lack of it, to the marking of time, the lack of natural light and the echoing sound."

"I walk in the hills, across moors and along the borders of the sea. I drive through the landscape, take train journeys through derelict backwaters and trudge the pavements of cities. I plot these journeys in my mind and in my daydreams remembering them as real things but drawing them with my mind’s eye."

Fiona Robinson     Studio at Weymouth, Dorset, UK


"The works on paper, with the marks rubbed back and laid bare, have a quietness about them, imparted by the apparent fragility of the pencil line, but the line also has a tensile strength that is insistent. The images stay in the mind. The generosity of scale of the canvases allows the lines to flow within the layers of paint imbuing them with a lyricism that suggests reverie. The process involves adjusting the memory, adjusting the line, allowing the formal requirements of the piece to take over from the initial free mark making, and then redrawing the route. Finally some parts of the image achieve a greater significance whilst preserving the faintest marks so that they stay in the mind like an unrecalled memory. Each piece of work records the progress of the drawing as well as tracing the route of the original walk. They are a sequence of remembering and forgetting."

Mary Judge


I've been so fortunate to run into Mary Judge, and her seductively intimate drawings and sculpture. We met in New York in 2008 following the opening of a large exhibit I was in at OK Harris -- along with mutual friends Joanne Mattera, Julie Gross and Margaret Neill.  Mary creates abstract drawings on paper, canvas, stone and poured concrete forms.

Mary Judge       Trebisonda Spazio per l'Arte Contemporanea, Perugia Italy 2002

"This former school in Perugia Italy provided a completely neutral environment and I proposed a stark, open presentation of works. Here one can see two spolvero drawings made directly on the wall, and a concrete floor piece."

 She uses the ancient Italian copying techinique of spolvero, or "dusting", to build line and hue with dry pigment, imparting an earthy, even primitive essence to her conceptual surfaces, and shapes.

 Mary Judge    Exotic Hex Series   
"These were inspired by Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs. Here a single design form is rotated around the center point of a circle. Size of works: 36x36"
 
She has worked also with Wildwood Press, creating amazing relief and photo litho prints on handmade paper. I am continually moved by the depth and sensitivity of this beautiful work -- her mark, her materials, her process.

Mary Judge  at Wildwood Press,

Mary is an Associate Professor of Art at Parson's School of Visual Arts, and she is represented by Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn and Dieu Donne Papermill in New York.

She is the recipient of a Dieu Donne Papermill Workspace Grant; NEA Mid Atlantic Foundation for the Arts Grant Works on Paper; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; New Jersey Council on the Arts Individual Artist's Grant. She has also been awarded residencies at Concrete Laboratory Samsoe, Denmark; Valparaiso Foundation for the Art, Mojacar, Spain; Fondazione Marguerita Arp ; and Tel Aviv Artist's Studios . Her work is included in collections here and abroad including The Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The British Museum, London, England; and the Neburger Bauman Collection.

Mary Judge   at Wildwood Press 

In her own words:
"The drawn image is a beginning - a first attempt that can be tentative and impulsive. The fragility of paper, the medium's usual support, and the visible tracks of the artist's hand combine to create a privileged space occupied by no other medium. More immediate and less controlled than in painting or sculpture, the artist's marks are fully exposed in drawing.

Mary Judge     Spazio Dinamico, San Guilano Terme & Villa Undulna, Pisa Italy 2005
"Works displayed includes spolvero drawings on panel, canvas and Carrara marble chosen by the artist on site at a local quarry. The largest piece was trucked down and placed outside the gallery. I worked over the surfaces of the various pieces using a black powdered pigment with various stencils. The second part of the show took place at the Spa, Villa Undulna, where we placed several pieces outdoors and also hung a group of small drawings."

During the 1960s and 1970s, artists began to push these definitions, and for many, including Robert Morris, Dorothea Rockborne, Nancy Spero, and most notably Sol LeWitt, drawing became the medium within which many of their conceptual investigations materialized.

Mary Judge   Metaphor Contemporary Art, New York NY 2005
"The high ceilings, great light and concrete floor inspired me to propose a large-scale cast concrete sculpture, my first made in the US, which was sold to a major collection. Also included were works on paper and canvas and panel. "

"Shifts in scale and new techniques also changed the environment for presentation and in turn helped elevate the status of the medium within the institutions of the art world.

Mary Judge      Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield CT, June-Sept 2007
"Smaller cast concrete sculptures were placed throughout the space, both inside on two different levels and in the exterior. The interior gallery space included relief prints and spolvero drawings and outside this gallery I created a site specific spolvero drawing for the corridor wall, creating a dialogue between interior and exterior spaces and works."

" Proportion is something natural that the body feels: it is part of our survival mechanism. Every cell in the body feels it ... its sensing rightness and harmony that in the end is what beauty really is. I think everyone has this sense of natural proportion, which for an artist can be reinforced through drawing. Through the drawing process, specifically figure drawing, you develop a rhythm, things fall together, links are created, something between the body/eye and model and mind, like everything is connected ... the problem of expressing balance, the force of gravity, potential or arrested movements, and so forth. ....

Mary Judge   at Wildwood Press  
 
 "....when I was very young, I began to actively draw on my own. Like so many young girls, I was always drawing horses; I was in love with horses. This desire manifested itself in countless drawings; the object of desire was the subject. I also learned from "how to draw" books, the kind where there are organic and geometric shapes that add one to another to make up an image. I think there's a connection with those geometric shapes and proportion.
Another part of understanding measure and proportion, other than direct contact with nature, is exposure to a wide range of "things" greatly made: cathedrals, temples, piazzas. In architectural structures proportion can be seen in a pure way. This exposure enters your body and becomes a part of what comes out. The Gothic cathedral at Cologne is a good example. It seems as if a great force is thrusting it up from underground, that it has emerged directly from the earth. There is a dazzling quality to the texture and repetition of the spires that grabs your attention and won't let it go. It resembles an exotic crystal formation: one can imagine those spires piercing the earth's crust on its journey from the underworld. This duality of expression of the upper and under worlds is a manifestation of the spiritual desires of those who built it. In a way, everything is encapsulated in it all at once: wonder, fear, and hope."


New Art TV Studio Visit with Mary Judge

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:http://www.newarttv.com/Mary%2BJudge

Thanks, Mary and Fiona.

 

Color as it Happens :: Steven Alexander and Willy Bo Richardson

Color as light and form. My own conclusions are manifested within a spectrum of black and white, and geometric shape -- an architecture which I find astonishingly complete. But in which viewers often suspect other color is lurking. This is not so: the repetitive striations of my drawings are strictly monochromatic. It is an illusion, and an example of how the color we see is very personal, defined by an accumulation of associations, thoughts and memory -- as well as wavelength.

Regardless of my own aesthetic choices, I am continually moved by the power of a full spectrum -- what actually happens between colors, and that transformation at the hands of a sensitive, skilled colorist. Here are two I know, both experienced, who use color deftly and in very different ways but within a shared language.

Steven Alexander installation, The World at Large, Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Housto

STEVEN ALEXANDER
Running into Steven Alexander -- his eloquent work and words, and sensitive, generous nature -- has been very special. Steven makes abstract paintings characterized by luminous color, sensuous surfaces and simple geometric configurations. He is an Associate Professor of Art at Marywood University, and has been Artist in Residence at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy and Visiting Artist/Professor of Art at Parsons School of Design in New York, Marywood University/France, Anjou & Paris, and Austin Community College, Austin, Texas. Steven is represented by Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Houston, Denise Bibro Platform, New York City and Ruth Morpeth Gallery, Hopewell, NJ.

In his own words:

"Sometimes the studio can be a fairly raucous place. Sure, there is plenty of time spent sitting, staring at stuff in progress, waiting for the motivation, energy or clarity required to make the next move.

Steven Alexander The Primrose Path, , 2007, 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas

But when things are in motion, it becomes a place where much happens at once, and where actions are often accompanied by a din of sound -- thick, layered and pulsating, moving in and out of focus -- symbiotic with the labor, the color and viscosity of the painting process. Recently addressed works in progress lay drying under large fans -- the more stuff to dry, the louder the dense hum of the fans. The louder the fans, the louder the music -- overtones of both combining and colliding to form disembodied drones. Often during a cycle of work, one piece of music will be played over and over for the entire duration -- the repetition seeming to deepen the focus -- the music sustaining a specific poetic relationship with the decisions being made.

Steven Alexander Vibrolux, 2009, 16" x 158", acrylic on 7 canvases

But then, at a certain point in the process of each painting, it is necessary to completely change the atmosphere. Guston once talked about the the whole laborious painting process leading up to the final fifteen minutes when everything comes together. Well, it may be more than fifteen minutes, but the final stage of each piece is indeed where it all happens -- the culmination, the payoff -- and it is the most relaxed and satisfying part of the process. That's when the music and the fans are turned off -- when a different, more acute focus kicks in. There is only the sound of the trowel sliding across the surface, the taps and clanks of tools and paint buckets on the table as they are chosen, discarded, shuffled around -- a subtle awareness of the sound and rhythm of my own breathing and the scuff of my shoeheels on the concrete floor. In this zone, several hours can pass in an instant -- and the expanse, the stillness, the silence that is the essence of painting becomes a physical presence in the room.

Steven Alexander Meteor Beach, 2008, 96 x 96 inches, acrylic on 4 canvases (Hines Collection, NYC )

My work is an exploration of relations that reside in the constant flux of pure sensory events. I am interested in the interaction between the painting and the viewer's imagination and experience; in the painting's catalytic potency - it's potential to generate unspecified mobile meaning.

Color operates in this work and in the world as a kind of pure energy, dynamic, capricious, evocative. The surfaces emphasize the sensual rather than analytical nature of the painting process, and attest to the pervasive presence of time. Within the structures of the work, archetypal relations of male/female, earth/sky, internal/external are inevitably implied; not as opposing forces, but as interdependent aspects of an animate whole. In this sense, the paintings might be regarded as open-ended cosmologies, or as chunks of raw reality, unencumbered.

Steven Alexander Shine Eye, 2009, 48" x 36", acrylic on canvas

I am trying to build, out of color and substance, a place for the viewer's consciousness - where unexpected associations and resonances may occur, where past and future merge with the present moment, and the stuff of life, love and desire has corporeal presence - states of being, embodied in paint. "

Steven Alexander 2009

Willy Bo Richardson

Willy Bo Richardson is an abstract painter living and working in Santa Fe, NM. His work can be seen at William Seigal Gallery in Santa Fe, Gallery Sakiko and Nohra Haime Gallery, NY, New York, and Fresh Paint Art Advisors, Los Angeles, CA. Several months ago, we were fortuitously connected by a gallery in Santa Fe because of notable similarities in our work. What a nice find... I have been moved by his translucent surfaces of veiled color, and sensitive use of scale. And by his articulate meanderings about his work:

Willy Bo Richardson Poseidon I, 114 x 53 inches, 2008

"Poseidon was painted under a tin roof on a hilltop with rain, lightning and thunder crashing down. I don't know if you've ever been under a tin roof with rain- but it's right there with it.

Willy Bo Richardson Poseidon, Oil on Canvas, 53 x 114 inches, 2008

"Natural surrounding is important. I have a love/like relationship with NM. I like the desert, and sometimes really crave it, but generally head for the mountains. Skiing is incredible in Taos. You can also hike up from the last chair to mountain peaks -- a snowy mountain with Tibetan prayer flags is actually up in Taos.

In the summer a good hike will be enough to look out to the distance, and that's where the desert, along side mountains is really lovely.

Willy Bo Richardson Three Stages, #1, Oil on Canvas, 29 x 31 inches, 2004

And that's where my paintings come in- spaciousness. I try to digest it and put it out for others. Paintings can be like doorways or at least windows to physical locations and more.

Willy Bo Richardson Bathers, Oil on Canvas, 2008

Of course, the paintings are not landscapes - strictly places.


Willy Bo Richardson Confluence, Oil on Canvas, 53 x 114 inches, 2001

The idea of painting is an adaptation. It’s something that our culture can relate to. It has a certain format. Within a frame, within a context. It’s a way of taking an abstract moment, a color, an experience and putting it into a culturally digestible format. 40,000 years ago, humans were painting on the walls of caves. The painting as we know it today is a recent invention, but it's purpose stems back to humans' earliest civilizations.

Willy Bo Richardson Schalako Wall, Oil on Canvas , 53 x 114 inches, 2006

When I was a child I remember being mesmerized by the blur of colors from the vantage point of a speeding car. Along with the blur and the speed was always a feeling of freedom. In this same way, whenever taking a flight, not only would I leave the earth physically, but on an emotional level gain distance on life.

My paintings give me the same experience. My painting brings perspective. In some ways it’s like creating a window. One can put this window anywhere. No need to move somewhere to get this view. But the window is not necessarily looking out on a beach scene, or a forest scene, or a mountain scene. It’s actually looking out on a “distance scene”, a scene where one has space from their personal life. "

Willy Bo Richardson, 2009

A single color is hardly ever unconnected or unrelated to other colors. Color exists as a matter of context, relating constantly to its changing environment. Light. Form.

Thanks Steve, and Willy