Text by Paul J. McLean
INTRODUCTION
It’s tempting to begin with a chronicle of my lifelong relationship with paper, with the tools of the sketch, the model, the drawing. I think at this point in the life journey, the initial impulse is reflective. One is prone to recount all the episodes and examples of a thing, a type, the connection with whatever it is, as it has unfolded over time. Of course, such an exercise can prove educational, should one be situated amongst students, or those prone to expand understanding of a shared interest. However, I am inclined to be more specific and focus on the current phase of development in the craft and practice, this particular point in the evolution of the 2D art aspect. Keeping in mind that this work is fundamental and extends to most other areas: like animation; composition; vision; framing; and so on.
"Screen #1 Sym Cell + Pattern | 1200 px | 2024
ABOUT PAPER 2025
1
As of this writing, I have completed a dozen and a half of the projected 100 or so small works on paper (and a few digital pieces) that will comprise the series. I therefore have a sense of the project, its direction, the flow. We will see. There may be some forays into figuration along the way, and other oblique content moves. Maybe some landscape and objective representation to come. For now, I’ll be commenting on interesting features and realizations that arise from or emerge in — “appear” perhaps is a better word — the earliest phase of completion.
"Thing #7 Sym Cell + Pattern | 1200 px | 2024
∞
To begin. The sets as denoted by title extend from previous series, such as WovenForm, Grid, Ellipticals, Symmetric(s), and the Anthromatons or Homo Generators (a nod toward my Thinker-mentor Wolfgang Schirmacher). The graphic styles in each sub-series can be traced back over the past few decades in my work. Some imply rendering in 3D materials, others suggest movement such as rotation or sliding and shifting. The mechanical is often referenced or alluded to. Tribal design (e.g., blankets, rugs, pottery or decoration) should be acknowledged by the artist as precursive. There’s more context to add (always), but that’s enough for now.
As the Paper 2025 series progresses, I have become aware of a facet of the work that I wouldn’t say is new, but rather that it is in these small paintings and drawings, for whatever reasons, more clear to my eye. That is, that these pieces map the “currents” that operate in the complex 4D paintings I produce, at the level of the subterranean. Having more or less always rejected the presets or rules of Western tradition composition, and other traditions, too, I have built paintings that suggest an idiosyncratic approach toward filling the usually geometric parameters that define and frame “art” in that lineage. The tension between containment and liberation from restraint is a major thread in the contemporary, but my proclivities have for a long time bent toward the post-contemporary. My formal and technical training — at this juncture not really divisible from what I would call LOVE of art, meaning exclusively painting and drawing, within the brackets of a certain art history — presuppose a level of acceptance of the rectangular, triangular and circular formats. From very early on, I described my program as “the figure on abstraction.” Over the past forty-five years of painting, I haven’t veered far offline from that description. The frequently speculative representation of people, places and things in my art owes as much to comics and the moving image, as it does to a strictly art historical model. That said, the worldly and otherworldly mesh in which the subject and object intermingle in Western art does not preclude the imagination from its natural shift toward the Dream.
If the reader will forgive the pun, we ought to get something straight, here. My art is intentionally non-geometric in its most recent (abstracted) configurations. By which I mean, literally, that I have over the past several years eschewed the tools, the mechanics of the edge and line. In the VyNIL series, there is no deployment of the ruler. The refinement of forms is a function of brush proficiency, a function of hand and eye coordination, for the purposes of provisional perception. The visualization plays on the preconception of the viewer, whose graphic preferences have been shaped by exposure to virtual, digital imaging and formats. Mine is a strategy that induces the dimensional domain of the new media that has become ubiquitous in the cultural field, as the given precept for the visible communication. I tacitly adhere to the idea that art requires no linguistic complement. Painting and drawing as art do or should not require language to be directly transmitted to the viewer, in my view. To echo Frank Stella, what you see is what you get. That said, I also believe that there is more to the visible than what the eye can see. This is a matter of ontology, of experience, conveyed via the observable, in happening, or event and being. Beyond the sensual encounter, we are also moved by other dynamics and forces, touched by what is not discernible as the strictly physical. For us humans, optics and interpretation are inextricably intermixed or -linked. The medium for that linkage is awareness. I suspect that the general resistance to free designs derives from deep psychological, ideological and social inhibitions, inhibitions which I have always felt mostly immune from. If I had to venture an informed guess, I might admit, though, that I have nevertheless remained somewhat fixated on the tensions common to my generation, and those immediately preceding and following it, instead of surrendering to the potential infinite creative freedom suddenly and readily available in this moment. Not that I have shied from exploring the novel potentialities, which manifest obviously in computer- and network-based art, performance, installation, environmental- or experiential art, or time-based production, etc. Those who have followed my artistic evolution or collaborated with me on multi-dimensional and -disciplinary projects know the opposite is true. It is that, in the completion phase of my art life, I have discovered the joys of simplicity, in the dictum of less-is-more. The affinity with simple stuff is informed by the consciousness of inference. Complexity is revealed through contingency, and I know longer put in upon myself to document or exhaust all options latent in a thing or situation. More and more, I am satisfied, with some exceptions, in recognizing the mystery of the thing making itself, the power of process to manifest outcomes that defy the dictum of surface, the concrete and the causal. What is possible is not necessarily obvious in what has already materialized, even to one who is fluent in the signs of realization and actualization. The inflection of chaos and chance fail to encompass the phenomenon of becoming. On a related vector, I have attained a position of comprehensive curiosity about the qualities of knowing and not-knowing, as they pertain to art, and by extension, the other formal means of expression. If there is a valid regret in the singular and finite existence, it is that one does not witness necessarily the finish of what one notices has started in the world. On the other hand, in art, the beginning and end are unified in a single object-thing, denoted by the signature. A kernel. At its best, then, art is a gesture at the true universal, if not the truth itself, which for anyone is conjectural. In other words, it is a sign of humanity (one human) conscious of and believing in truth, and worthwhile, meaningful and valuable, as such. And like all signs, a frail gesture of the mortal being, presumptuous of timelessness. Like a tuning.
October 28, 2024, Astoria, Oregon
