City of Bloomington, MN Virtual Artistry Exhibits, 13 Jan 2021

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From YouTube: Virtual Atrium Gallery tour: Practicing the Presence of Place

Description

Take a look at the latest Atrium Gallery exhibit presented by Artistry, Practicing the Presence of Place.

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We're here today, at my exhibit called practicing the presence of place and it's in the atrium gallery and presented by artistry so practicing. The presence of place to me is about putting oneself in a particular physical location and sort of absorbing its essence.

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So I'm often asked do I paint on location, and I do not I'm a studio painter, but when I go out to a location, I may take some photographs to help my memory, but as much as anything I'm there just trying to absorb it, both visually the sound, the feel the smells and to put that into my memory, I consider myself a memory painter, and so I'm painting my memory and if I do that well- and you know this place- it'll connect with your memory, and my intention is that the connection between two memories is often stronger than saying holding up a photograph to someone with the painting.

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That's behind me here. This is song of mine. haha While it has all the elements that you would see from a walk above minnehaha falls all the way down to the river. You would never see them all in one location and one element of what you'll see in these paintings is part of chinese painting theory, which is we're not just using a single point perspective where everything's radiating for me, but a moving perspective.

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So first, the artist is here then they're here then they're here then they're here and a painter can move across distances across time across seasons and you'll be able to find that in many of the paintings that I'm presenting here in this show for most of my painting life, I've focused on landscapes that I know deeply, and so a lot of what you'll see in the show are images of minnesota minnehaha falls the north shore lake pepin.

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For this show I have moved beyond that and there's one piece that is of the grand canyon which I had experienced, maybe for two days, and so the challenge was. Could I still capture that essence and present a memory of it that would resonate with people who've? Had that experience or or not?

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The last piece in the show is dreams of six grandfathers, which takes that a little farther and as a painting of a place that no longer exists.

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It's a painting of mount rushmore before it was mount rushmore, and so my intention here was. Could I recapture the essence of a place that was a deeply spiritual place that no longer exists?

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Another element that you're going to notice in this work?

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That's a part of chinese painting, theory or painting tradition is a number of these paintings have writings on them, uh inscriptions on them, and that is an integral part of chinese painting, the relationship of the calligraphy and the relationship of the painting intertwine, and it's generally felt that in chinese tradition, a painting isn't completed unless it has an inscription, and that fascinates me because I know of no other art genre, where you write on the piece uh before you're done so you'll find that on a number of these pieces with all but one exception, there are poems that I've written about places that I know and love, and I would like to read you one of those poems called superior palisade.

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A casual mention of lake superior and my mind, floods with memories, a tenderness returns to my heart. I miss her immediately. I yearn to return to her shores. I miss her colors. Her smells the raggedness of her shores, the smoothness of her rocks. I miss the extremes of her moods, the quietness of her sleek gentle reflective ways.

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The viciousness of her waves swallowing ship's whole taking what she will, though years may pass between visits. I still claim this superior lake. As my lake superior in her presence, I feel the vitality of life, my life and its utter insignificance all in the same breath.

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She holds my memories. She helps me remember who I was, who I am. She makes no promises except to be there to always be there. She is a superior lake. She is my lake.

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