Posts Tagged ‘ se portland ’

Last Thurs, April 29th from 4-11pm.  Up until May 25th, 2010

The artists this month are Chuck Bloom, David Stein, Keenan Havens & Michael Fields
The goodfoot: 2845 SE Stark Portland, OR 97214
open daily 4-2:30

Chuck Bloom say’s about his work “Before the painting is finished, the vision is already fading to memory.  I can only hope that I’ve understood enough of the message to help me further along this tiresome trek.  Most of the time these “visions” are not complete – just bits and pieces of things, like symbols.  The paintings themselves are very organic in nature.  They all stem from my established visual vocabulary, but evolve in ways that are not premeditated or even foreseeable.  In this way, I work very closely to André Breton’s notion of automatism, which he believed must be present in works of art or writing in order for it to remain in the sphere of Surrealism.  It is mandatory as a Surrealist that artwork explore a mental space outside the field of normal awareness, in a place where consciousness, unconsciousness and all things possible and impossible exist as one.  At the nexus of my work is a concern and philosophy about the environment and man’s place in it.  Global warming, overpopulation and the breakdown of basic human communication and the resulting “fractured humanity” we endure are at the forefront of my concerns; however, elements beyond my conscious knowing seep in. Many elements in my paintings are of the seemingly familiar or mundane, but evade a total accessibility and a clearly defined meaning.  In this way I speak in a kind of “visual metaphor,” or perhaps what some have called “enigmatic poetry.”  Doorways and windows are passages from the outside to the inside, from one place to another, that is their definition and I use them no differently.  They can be bricked or boarded up, open to darkness, a stormy horizon, an idyllic interlude or even a source of water for things in one world from another.  Depending on how they are depicted they can represent the hope of another unspoiled world or a reminder of what is left behind or avoided.  They are opportunity or the lack of opportunity.  Opening the windows of minds, tearing open the locked doors of our rationalism creates endless possibilities for the future of humanity.  This manipulation of subject matter is natural and balanced.  Ultimately, the psychological state of events is for you, the viewer, to extrapolate – the results of which you may find you least expected. My ultimate goal is to walk right into one of my canvases and never return, but the door opens and the door closes in a blink of the eye.  The barriers are endless and the map I followed getting here is torn and unreadable.  Perhaps I’ve pretended to know where I was all along just to feel more comfortable, but it doesn’t make it any less real”

David Stein was born in Chicago and grew up in the Midwest.  He is a self-taught artist, and inspired by an overactive imagination.  David’s childhood plays a strong role in some of the more recognizable qualities of his drawing and painting style, such as the reoccurrence of fantastical creatures, anthropomorphic animals and his attention to fine detail.  He say’s about this body of work entitled “Can You Fake A Smile?  or A Series of Friendly Interactions With Pazuzu” “This particular body of work follows a series of friendly interactions where the negative internal dialogue and thoughts of the characters are exposed.  When I was younger I was told that there were chemicals in the water of our public pool. When activated by urine the chemicals would turn into a dark purple cloud and surround the culprit. It’s kind of like that. Only in this series I’ve replaced the dark purple cloud with snakes. To an untrained scout many snakes may appear to look similar, however, the results of their bite differ dramatically. Much like our words and thoughts. Even the seemingly harmless ones could strangle the weak.”

When Keenan Haven approaches a new drawing, he starts by planting a circle in the void of the picture plane. Using this circle, Keenan begins to add on drawings, slowly building the image. He works without an end product in mind. Instead, he is engaged in a constant interaction with the piece, trying to assess what the next step is. The image is finished when he deems it to be complete. When working on an image that is not preconceived, the artist is given absolute freedom. Yet Keenan finds himself following a set of standards and rules that he unconsciously impose upon himself, causing each image to hold a familiar quality to the last. Keenan interpret this familiarity as a clue into his own state of consciousness. Each and every choice he makes within his images comes to reflect a certain unconscious thought process that he engaged in at that moment, and the more frequent he makes the same choices, the more it suggests to be a significant part of his being. The images Keenan have created in the past and the images he has create in the present share a strong familiarity, yet slowly shift in such elements as subject matter, compositional preferences and image flow. These qualities of his images are reflective of  his progression through time, and the simultaneously unchanging and fluctuating manner of his own consciousness.

Michael Fields is a self-taught artist based in Portland, Oregon. His work is the product of personal reflection.. “When I paint, I contemplate the world as I know it: situations and people of past, present and future come into focus and it is my reaction to these concepts that dictates what emerges onto the canvas.” Michael’s work is born not of planned composition, but inner dialog, often challenging the viewer to decipher messages both on the surface and buried deep within it’s structure.