CONTACT

COVERING GROUND, Harris Gallery
September 13-October 20, 2011

I am creating a new body of work in a series called Patterns Of Perception. The Patterns are complex patterns of rectangular shapes with a color palette that is allowed to evolve intuitively. (Previous work in oil and high melt-300 degree-waxes required color to be planned in advance, as a sculptural element. Those millimeter thick layers were scraped and buffed and layered 30 or more times and because of the use of high-melt waxes with the oil paint, it required the use of a gas mask.) The medium in the Patterns Of Perception works, is acrylic, metallic and oil paints. Three large panels will debut in Covering Ground, Harris Gallery, University of La Verne, September 13 – October 20, 2011, a cultural exchange with three Australian abstractionists and three Los Angeles abstractionists. The colors in the Patterns Of Perception for this show are mostly forms of gold.

Contemplating why gold evolved through this process, I think I am concerned about the world economic situation that has disrupted economies into states of haves and have-nots. The instability underlies so much of what concerns human security. The paintings do not seem political. They are meant to be meditations upon the irregular patterns and their movements, which may reveal an idea. Here are three rifts on the baroque-like theme of rectangles arranged in horizontal bands that do not form a repeat. All three paintings for the Covering Ground exhibition are in golden hues.

The first painting is called Patterns Of Perception (Gold Bars), 65x70", acrylic and metallic paint on panel. There are six main horizontal rows of irregularly patterned bars of rectangles—the horizontal pattern does not repeat into the next row. There is a large offset square overlaying five of the horizontal rows, suggesting “that which is coming into view”. The composition signifies my process of painting and allowing the overload of stimulus I receive to reveal itself into a pattern I can then meditate on. This painting also uses areas of interference paints, which causes color shifts side to side, up and down, and the metallics merge the non-repeating patterns into a whole.

Time Zones, 65x70", acrylic, metallic, and micaceous iron oxide on panel, employs 15" wide rectangles to form four horizontal rows that grow ever deeper as they move toward the bottom edge. Overlaying these four rows are two interrupted rows of floating rectangles that move forward in space/time, inferring the exchange with the Australians. The micaceous iron oxide squares drop back in the past or distant space. Bronze squares move forward in time. The top six golden squares form part of our present, but because none of the golds or bronzes are the same there is significant power movement fore and aft, up and down, to the piece.

The final piece for Covering Ground is called, Reign, 65x70", acrylic and metallic paint on panel. Reign, has the exact division of four rows as Time Zones, yet the rectangles in Reign are compressed into fine thin lines of golden hues behind a luminous foreground color. The golden lines behind appear like rain.

Special thanks to Ruth Trotter for her organization of the Covering Ground exhibition and abstract paintings, as well as Marion Lane, and the three Australians: Katherine Boland, Terry Brooks, and Dawn Csuotros. Thanks to Dion Johnson for his curatorial skills and striking installation of the exhibition, and to Dr. Betty Brown, Art Historian and Art Critic, for her catalog essay, and to the University of La Verne for the project as an exchange between the two countries, Australia and the United States.

BARBARA KERWIN-SURVEY OF PAINTINGS
Los Angeles Pierce College, April 12 – May 3, 2012

The curiosity I have had creating works never seen before is on view in the divergent use of the rectangle, a motif I have explored for fifteen years. Collector, Cliff Schoenberg stated, “We have noticed you never make the same painting twice.” My curiosity drives my desire to see a work come to life. A need to feel a peaceful meditation in the works I create is also a driving goal. In this survey, LA Pierce College's curator and chief art historian, Dr. Constance Moffatt has arranged to borrow back from collectors the major works in this survey. Special thanks to Ruth Bachofner for her assistance with the provenances. Black Reign, 65 x 140", 2012, an acrylic and metallic diptych will be presented at this exhibition. My figurative works, created while teaching life drawing will also be on view. I love the figure, and push the figure into the rectangular corners of the support, relating the forms back into the geometries I love, again finding peace in the spaces between.