I’m in the beginning/middle of a new series inspired by a different model — the Jason series. And predictably, this series is taking a different direction. These paintings feel more active. The figure, as I sketched it, feels more important to establishing the “space between.” I don’t want to lose it even though part of my objective is letting go of figure, line, color, and shape. Is there another way?
I tried looking back at the work of David Park — a figurative abstract painter and teacher during the 1940/50s and a leader in the Bay Area Figurative Movement — hoping I might find some answers.
I got a few hints. David Park, after a while, broke with the leading abstract expressionist idea promoted by Clifford Still whose work strove to be non-referential and relied on painting abstract shapes in a large space. Park felt this approach brought attention to the painter (the concepts being painted) and not the painting. Park wanted a point of reference for the viewer and he chose the figure. It grounded the painting and made it about something other than an idea. David Park’s works aren’t realistic. His use of perspective, color, and his painterly application flirt with abstraction. They may have even been influenced by Still’s paintings. Park painted from memory not from live models. His paintings are evocative of something more than just an idea. The viewer can put them in a context and judge them from that starting point.
Most art history describes the technical aspects of how Park did what he did and where it is historically. But what interests me more is why he did what he did. What did he see and what did he feel he needed to show us?
I want my paintings to have a sense of grounding and abstraction — to be about something (a figure) but seen in a different way (looking through the space between). I don’t want viewers to be distant and cerebral. I want them curious and playful.