Notbook is an informal collection of ideas, paintings and photographs revealing the creative process of contemporary artist Chris Page.
White Continuum 2005 acrylic on canvas 30 x 60 inches ©2005 Chris Page
It is hard to believe that this painting is over 10 years old. My sense of time is losing some of it's coherence, as my memory feels too complex to be useful as an accurate indicator of time.
Waking up this morning (04.02.2016) there was a thin cloud layer in the sky that revealed a slight bit of light down at the horizon. The field like nature of this painting from 2012 came to mind.
Sky Gesture 1 ©2012 Chris Page
2012
54 x 84 inches
Acrylic on Canvas
Sky Gesture I uses a rhythmic overlaying of gestural action using the length of my reach as the predominant size of the gesture. The final layer, a very thin wash, includes migrating drips that were allowed to remain visible on the right and lower edges of the painting. In Payne’s gray revealing lavender along the bottom edge, the spatial field appears to optically hover as if not quite synonymous with the picture plane.
“Establishing a personal style feels ludicrous yet necessary. ”
The photographs look better that the actual paintings.
Small painting acrylic on paper 18 x 24 inches ©2016 Chris Page
Small Sky Painting was created by over-painting an earlier painting. I am interested in the gap between cloud banks where the orange ground of the sky is revealed. The challenge is how to contend with the inherent figure ground problem of the atmospheric ground. The original soft orange of the ground made for a good chromatic contrast to the gestures using Payne's grey of the top layer. To see some other example of the appearance of this kind of sky gap check out the next entry Dark and Light Stripes.