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MARY GILKERSON DEVELOPS A HABIT
By Wim Roefs
“Our
culture tends to make us feel divorced from the natural world,” Mary Gilkerson says
on her website. “I want my artwork to give the viewer a chance to re-engage
with that world, to experience and recover a sense of place.” In part to
intensify that engagement, her viewers’ and her own, and in part as a marketing
device, Gilkerson in 2012 decided to paint a small painting every day for three
months. The 90 x 90 Daily Painting
Project was born.
Every
day, the Columbia, S.C., artist posted an image on her blog and sent it into
the world through email blasts and social media to engage her audience in
preparation for 701 Center for Contemporary Art’s Columbia Open Studios 2012,
which took place in April. People could buy a painting instantly or stop by her
studio during Open Studios to see the work in person and buy it.
Gilkerson’s
new practice was facilitated by her daily trek to the Lower Richland area to
take care of and ride her horse. Driving in the countryside with a new painting
in mind made her look at the landscape near roads and highways around Columbia
more deliberately. “The project enriched my studio practice in both expected
and unexpected ways,” she says. “Working from observation every day really
deepened my connection with the places I worked.”
While
she continued to create larger paintings and monotypes after the 90 days were
over, Gilkerson missed the connection with the land and the one-painting-a-day
routine. For Open Studios 2013, she upped the ante with 12 Squared: 144 Daily Paintings, as before working on site and
through photos and sketches. “The edge of a highway is a strange intersection
of nature and culture with a wealth of potential subjects,” she says. “We all
move so fast that we don’t see the world in the same detail that people did
before modern transportation came along. I hope that the paintings will
encourage people to pay more attention to the world around them, to notice the
small and subtle as well as the large and grand.”
Gilkerson’s
daily paintings, which she continued after 12
Squared, are the apotheosis of a process that began when in 2004 she
started making monotypes regularly with Greenville, S.C., master printer Phil
Garrett. Garrett had introduced her to monotypes in the 1990s during workshops
for Gilkerson’s students at her hometown’s Columbia College. She enjoyed the
process and in 2003 “started using thinner paints in my paintings, scratching
and wiping out areas as well as making direct painterly marks. That’s when I
began thinking about making monotypes on a more regular basis.”
Gilkerson
has created some 100 monotypes with Garrett, and making monotypes affected her
paintings, which became looser, more direct and more decisive. Making monotypes
made Gilkerson, it seems, a more confident and self-assured painter, which facilitates
her daily habit.
–
Wim Roefs is the owner of if ART Gallery.
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Bob Trotman, Large Person of Interest, 2007,
wood, tempera, wax, steel, 33 x 36 x 16, $14,000 |
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Bob Trotman, Person of Interest, 2006,
wood, tempera, wax, steel, 25 x 25 x 14 in., $12,500 |
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Bob Trotman, Mrs. T, 2006, wood tempera, wax,
steel, 22 x 20 x 23 in., $9,000 |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLII Sleeper, 2013, oil on canvas, 18 x 18 in., $1,600/SOLD |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLVII Dialogue, 2013, oil on canvas panel, 12 x 12 in., $1,000 |
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David Yaghjian, Afloat, 2013, monotype,
10 x 8 in., $450
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David Yaghjian, Red Door, 2013, monotype,
12 x 10 in., $575
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David Yaghjian, Yellow Tree, Red Neck, 2013,
monotype 10 x 10 in., $500 |
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| David Yaghjian, Leaving The Stage, 2013, oil on panel, 7 x 5 in., $360 |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLIV Highway, 2013, Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in., $1,760 |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLV Exit Stage Right, 2013, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in., $2,500 |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLVI Lawnchair Angel, 2013, oil on canvas panel, 12 x 12 in., $1,000 |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLVIII Intermission, 2013, oil on canvas panel, 8 x 10 in., $640 |
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| David Yaghjian, Scene XLVIX Clearing the Stage, 2013 oil on canvas panel, 9 x 12 in., $720 |
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| David Yaghjian, Shiny Things, 2013, oil on canvas panel, 7 x 5 in., $360 |
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| David Yaghjian, Table, 2013, oil on canvas panel, 8 x 10 in., $640 SOLD |
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Leslie Hinton, Play Boy Bunny, 2013,
earthenware, underglazes, glazes, acrylic and prismacolor, 13 x 5 x 3.5 in., $600 SOLD |
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Leslie Hinton, Soul Man, 2013,
earthenware, underglazes and glazes, 9 x 4 x 2.5 in., $450 |
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| Leslie Hinton, Rock'n The Hard Place, 2013, earthenware, underglazes and glazes, 11 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 4 in., $450/SOLD |
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| Leslie Hinton, Jurassic Head Dress, 2013 earthenware, underglazes and glazes, 12 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 5 in., $600 |
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Leslie Hinton, Four Legs, One Thought, 2013,
Earthenware, underglazes and glazes
$600/SOLD
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Leslie Hinton, Miss Plumbago, 2013,
earthenware, underglazes, glazes, acrylic and prismacolor, 16 x 5 x 3.5 in., $600 |
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Leslie Hinton, Didn't Quite Work Otherwise,
2013, earthenware, underglazes, glazes, acrylic,
prismacolor and wire, 9 x 10.5 x 4 in., $350
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