Walking at Fort River Conservation Trail the day after Christmas. The clouds cam in as a solid field of gray. The rain started soon after I got through walking
Notebook
Notbook is an informal collection of ideas, paintings and photographs revealing the creative process of contemporary artist Chris Page.
Sky 12.24.2016
The brilliant blue of the winter sky creates a large qualitative difference with the dark and light clouds in the Tao Sky photos from December 9, 2016
Art trip to Washington D.C.—December 2016
The Phillips collection and The East Building of the National Gallery got most of my attention during a four day visit to Washington D.C. Some of my favorite artists including Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko were well represented. The Dwan Gallery show at the National Gallery was particularly satisfying. The little Jake Berthot (below) was at the Phillips.
Laib, Wolfgang, Wax Room: Wohin bist Du gegangen – wohin gehst Du? (Where have you gone – where are you going?), 2013, Beeswax, light bulb (Phillips Collection)
I had a great trip to Washington, D.C. in early December, 2016. The East Building of the National Gallery of Art is reopened and the new tower that houses the Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman paintings is impressive. Other artists and shows on view that captured my attention include, Anselm Kiefer and his lead airplane, Robert Motherwell, Alfred Jensen, Mel Bochner, Cy Twombly and Barbara Kruger. The Dwan Gallery show was a great opportunity to see the Spiral Jetty drawings of Robert Smithson along with the giant wall mounted photographs. Isamu Naguchi was at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and I was able to see one of my favorite sculptures of his: Sky Mirror. Jake Berthot was at the Phillips along with Arlene Shechet's Intersections: From Here On Now and Whitfield Lovell's The Kin Series and Related Works.
Flying 12.11.2016 — 12.15.2016
Walking Wentworth 12.09.2016
Experimenting with using Lightroom & Photoshop to combine images into a high res panorama.
This images below couldn't be used by Lightroom to combine into a larger image.
Remembering the Incoming Rain
I found this painting on photograph that comes from a walk taken July of 2015 on the grounds of the Clack Art Institute. The walk was part of the exhibition SkyWalk. This did not get exhibited at the time.
Remembering the Incoming Rain, archival digital print 8.5 x 11 in. 2015
Sky Observation 12.01.2016
December 1, 2017 4:04 PM Amherst, MA ©2016 Chris Page
Edgeless Dichotomous Sky Fragment—observed twenty minutes before sunset.
Three paintings on paper from the 'Eyes Toward Heaven' project
Eyes Toward Heaven III tryptych
2016
acrylic on paper
30 x 66 inches
Remember the Tao I
2016
acrylic on paper
22 x 66
Remember the Tao II
2016
acrylic on paper
22 x 66 inches
Walk 11.27.2016
Getting back to my walking practice after getting the show up at BMAC and surviving the election distractions.
New Show at the BMAC
EYES TOWARD HEAVEN An installation of paintings, photographs and video by Chris Page opens October 28, 2016 5:30–7:30 PM at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. Show will be up until January 8, 2017
Sky Moment I acrylic on canvas 6x14 ft.
Cloud Dance 07.18.2016
I am beginning to create images with creative passes in panoramic mode. The arc of the camera is like a single zen gesture. This group of images has become the basis for the show EYES TOWARD HEAVEN at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center that runs from October 28, 2016–January 8, 2017. Images from a twenty five minute period July 18, 2016 4:33–5:08 PM while walking the Fort River Trail, Hadley MA.
July 18, 2016 5:08 PM Hadley, MA
Five Ways of Sky
World of Form, Form in Emptiness, Approaching Emptiness, Emptiness as Void, Emptiness as All Things Visible. This is similar to the ox herding pictures often depicted in Zen arts.
Unfolding Performative Process 400 Million years and Counting
Unfolding Performative Process
400,000,000 years and counting
Soft Gaze Meditation Field.
Experimental work from several years ago using pastel text on a sky photograph. The upper text comes from a combination of internet research and thought awareness that arose during a walk. The bottom text is the optical technique I used for experiencing this particular sky. The blue paint is totally accidental as this was lying around the studio for several years.
Revisiting Two Painting Sets from 2013
Nine Rhythms Between Dark and Light. This is one of the early sky based sequences, graphite acrylic on paper, 9 x 12 inches each.
Six Sky Rhythms. This is an of the early sky group, acrylic on canvas. Each painting is approximately 54 inches long.
Sky Gesture sequence from 2013
Sky Gesture Sequence 09.09.2013 acrylic on canvas panels, 5 x 42 inches.
Originally exhibited in 2013 as part of Sky-Time Unbroken Continuities, Hope & Feathers Gallery, Amherst, Massachusetts.
An early precursor to the twenty foot long painting, Warm Wind 11.109.2016. The painterly success of this piece is calling me to work similarly at a larger scale. Trust in process and incident will be necessary to pull them off.
This work is available: PRICE
Remembering a painting from 2005
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.
Notebook:
Test Post using Williamstown Storm Walk Painting Set
Williamstown Storm Walk—image2
Williamstown Storm Walk—image1
these two photographs of the same artwork I am publishing as a test to see which one shows up in google and to see how long it take before it shows up in google if at all. This image exists in my pagestudios.com site and may take priority.
Early Morning Sky Triggers Painting Memory
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
Sky Gesture 1
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.
Ocean Triptych
“Establishing a personal style feels ludicrous yet necessary. ”
The photographs look better that the actual paintings.