Installation view of Painting: A Love Story (Outside the Lines series) at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2014. Photo by Paul Hester.
Painting: A Love Story (Outside the Lines series)
About
Without cynicism, these painters stage studio experiences in which one sees acts of painterly lovemaking accumulate over time. By tenderly examining the surfaces of their works, one can reconstruct the painterly decisions, additions, revisions, and erasures that lead to the finished image and thereby reconstruct the narrative by which the artists fall in love with their own work. The painterly pleasure they seek is like the fugitive lover whose loss has to be perpetually risked in order to keep their passion level high, and we, the audience, can experience that pleasure vicariously.
In each and every piece in the show failure has been risked and sometimes encountered. Several of the artists spoke of moments of desperation in the studio when the works felt unsalvageable and almost ended up in the dumpster. In each case the next studio decision allowed the artists to become re-enraptured and let these experiments take on a public life forever in the artists’ official output. Every artwork is the result of a series of decisions, but this mode of painting lets the process of one decision after another remain visible, and for those of us that love artist processes and cherish even the illusion of being with them in their studios, such paintings are like watching a romance, where the outcome remains uncertain until the very last moments.
Painting: A Love Story includes fifteen artists from New York, Boston, Houston, and El Paso: Richard Aldrich, David Aylsworth, Andrew Brischler, Joseph Cohen, Matt Connors, Keltie Ferris, Geoff Hippenstiel, Eva Lundsager, Jason Middlebrook, Sam Reveles,Cordy Ryman, Amy Sillman, Shane Tolbert, Scott Treleaven, and Charline von Heyl.
Organizers
Painting: A Love Story (Outside the Lines series) is organized by Bill Arning, Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
Support
Outside the Lines has been made possible by the patrons, benefactors and donors to the Museum’s Major Exhibition Fund: Major Patron -Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Fayez Sarofim, and Michael Zilkha. Patrons – Carol C. Ballard, Mr. and Mrs. I. H. Kempner III, Ms. LouisaStude Sarofim and Mr. Wallace Wilson. Benefactors – George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, Louise D. Jamail, Anne and David Kirkland, KPMG, LLP, Beverly and Howard Robinson, Andrew Schirrmeister III and Leigh and Reggie Smith. Donors – A Fare Extraordinaire, Anonymous, Bank of Texas, Bergner and Johnson Design, Jereann Chaney, Elizabeth Howard Crowell, Dillon Kyle Architecture, Sara Paschall Dodd, Ruth Dreessen and Thomas Van Laan, Marita and J.B. Fairbanks, Jo and Jim Furr, Barbara and Michael Gamson, Brenda and William Goldberg, King & Spalding L.L.P., Marley Lott, Belinda Phelps and Randy Howard, Phillips, Lauren Rottet, Susan Vaughan Foundation, Inc., and Karen and Harry Susman.