Bio
Biography of contemporary artist Chris Page.
About Chris Page
Introduction
I am a contemporary artist working in the Amherst–Northampton area of Western Massachusetts creating paintings and photographic sequences in response to walking the land.
I have been having a dialog between nature and the practice of painting for over forty years. Influenced by the large-scale paintings of the New York art scene including Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, I have long bee engaged in painting large canvases that navigate and between abstraction and landscape, trying to share my experiences of being in nature. Recently I have added photography as part of my practice.
I have exhibited widely in museums, galleries and alternative spaces around New England and in Brooklyn, NY and Santa Fe, NM.
History
Though born in Madrid, Spain, I grew up in Boston Massachusetts. I have lived and worked since 1974 in a house my wife and I built in the Pelham Hills near Amherst, Massachusetts.
In 1995, I travelled to the northern part of Baffin Island, 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, at the time of the summer solstice to watch the spring migration of birds and narwhal whales.
Influenced by the colors and profound openness of the Arctic, my painting became very focused on merging abstraction and landscape. my next endeavor was the “Stream Series,” based on the study of Scarborough Brook that runs close to home.
Walks
Recently, I moved my art practice out of the studio to include ‘walks’, where witnessing the landscape, specifically the unfolding daytime sky - its luminosity, immensity, complexity, myriad colors, and dynamic shifting cloud patterns are performed as an artwork. The 'walks' are considered short-duration, performance artworks that get documented with photographs. My current paintings and photographic sequences relate directly to this witnessing practice.
Paintings
Working mostly with the canvas on the floor, I paint in an intuitive fashion often working in bursts of intense, concentrated energy applying acrylic paint in a broad range of techniques frequently using painterly gestures to buildup complex forms and rhythms.
