Before After Oaths
2010s--
acrylic on board, 20”h x26 ¼” (diptych)

AFTER OATHS First 4 images
acrylic on board, 20”h x 26 ¼”w

My exhibition “Before, During, and after: The Story of a Work,” at the Denison Museum, Granville, Ohio, in 2011, gave a condensed history not only of Oaths? Questions?, a collaborative constructed book: it also permitted a condensed overview of my conceptual thought informing studio practice.

Reflecting on this, led to a return to The High Valley 19, 1983-84, a key painting that from then on guided some conceptual direction of a new series: BEFORE AFTER OATHS.

A consideration of Repetition and Difference was inaugurated. Works make a point of the decision to change ordering procedures set in advance, across the gap of a diptych: a predetermined decision to reorient, or to shape, or to alter scale, or to induce spacing, or to harmonize in a pattern which dissolves.  Even so, differential occurs within either panel, not set, not determined in advance yet occurring in the hand-worked process, intuitively: improvisatory drift occurring, mistakes allowed.

Works from this series were on view at the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational, 2018, with gift/purchase to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Not forgotten was my long-term critique of the topic Red, Yellow, Blue, that is to say, the primaries, as a very sign of modernism; in BEFORE AFTER OATHS, two reds, two yellows, two blues posit the semantic sign to problematize the primaries—a critical look into the modernist palette under post-structuralist non-synonymy. In BEFORE AFTER OATHS: GRAY, Paynes Gray forced the issue: how to do it all with/within one tone: each repetition of the mark being pigmental evidence of differential within the same; drift occurring, mistakes allowed, differing, shifting the iteration.  For both series, the rule of change across the gap was in effect; the nature of the shift altered with the particular piece: sometimes introducing shape and reorientation, sometimes having spacing within fields as the crucial decision. Sometimes discovering the drift and attenuating effects proactive of “folds” and “fol-d” was in effect;  sometimes, as the material pigment insists, the fading of a passage established the context for continuity, or not. Occasionally the initiative was with vivid, code-switching patterns. To some viewers this series is “lovely” (!); but not so, to those who think with structuralist and post-structuralist forms of thought.

The exhibition Some Differences showed a range of these tactical approaches – Silas Von Morisse Gallery
For slideshow of the exhibition Some Differences see – Silas Von Morisse Gallery
Reviews of this and other shows are to be found on the site.

Especially insightful is Two Coats of Paint

Knowledgeable and discerning is Haber’s Art Reviews

Generous in its way is – Artnews

For further discussion, see the 96-page catalogue A Work, and…, Marjorie Welish with Lilly Wei in dialogue, 2016