Every year an art gallery near where I live invites twenty-four regional artists to submit two paintings for a show called 48 Pillars. Every painting must be done using a 48x12 inch vertical canvas, hence the title of the show. I was asked to participate in the show for 2020, which I immediately accepted.
I found the size constraint of this exhibition to be an intriguing challenge. What kind of painting could I create that would work successfully as a tall, narrow shape? Since I tend to paint landscapes, I immediately thought of painting something that emulated traditional Chinese landscape art, such as the example below. (credit: unknown)
Although I only needed to create two works of art for this show, I decided to create three paintings, in case one of them failed to turn out OK. I aligned the three vertical canvases side by side on my easel and began sketching out my idea. In lieu of mountains and trees shrouded in mist, as seen in traditional Chinese landscape art, I introduced city skyscrapers and winding freeways emerging from what could possibly be smog. And since Chinese painting traditionally done with black ink, I chose to maintain a grey color palette, specifically using only white and black paint.
I didn’t want to become mired down painting a lot of intricate details, so I tried to keep my brush strokes loose and painterly. My choice to maintain a monochromatic palette proved somewhat challenging. I discovered that, depending on whether I painted light over dark, or dark over light, my grey values would shift, resulting in either a warm grey or cool grey cast. I had to sometimes mix in small amounts of brown and blue paint to rebalance the neutrality of my greys.
I decided to call my finished painting Interzone. This title partly derives from a song of the same name by the band Joy Division that I felt matched the frenetic, bleak emptiness of my image, as well as a landscape that is simultaneously fragmented and interconnected.
