Last June (2021) I was leaving a party in Troy, winding through the room where the DJ was playing, and I stalled and turned in the too-loud space—a moment of taking it all in before leaving. I don't remember how I ended up chatting with Brent. He said a friend invited him, that he was from Amsterdam (NY), which I'd only ever driven by. He gave a quick sketch of what he was doing there, making sculpture, and building a gallery space as a new wing of the town history/miscellany museum. It was a loose description that I filled in with images from my past as an artist living in mixed use and odd old buildings. It was an easy, unexpected conversation. We Instagrammed. Soon after, Brent visited my studio. It was a long visit and we went through years of work. He was very curious about how the work developed—where it all came from, what was behind it. And as he described his project in Amsterdam, our meeting felt more and more like lucky timing. We scheduled a show.
The work Brent pointed to was a of particular thread. I had been very engaged with hard-edged narrative paintings informed by the Northern Renaissance. It was a pointed series that I worked on for much of the Trump era. But the work Brent was interested in was much more human. Sylvan scenes with tonalist influences. Landscapes with unassuming figures. Elemental. I worked in that vein from June until this show, often on red ochre grounds which impart warmth and unity to the work, and without too much deliberation. No modern pigments. When I hang work, my tendency is to try to show everything, so whittling down the choices was instructive. Brent chose 23 pieces, 17 of which ended up on the wall. His aim was to keep simplicity while presenting a profusion of themes—a real balancing act.
"The air we breathe" was a phrase that kept coming up as I worked on After the Flood. From an email: "I thought of [space] as drawing together many levels of 'atmosphere'—climatic, psychological, historical, cultural—like a snapshot of lingering national karma." Pictorial space is a given, a unifying metaphor. There's a notion that what sees confusion isn't confused. Space is awareness and can't be confused by the confusion it contains. It can hold anything—an arena of knowing, part microscope, part theater, part fun-house mirror. My practice is to play in this space and fill it with everything I remember.
