MILA DREHER
Paint moves me to make art; I discovered this incentive while studying at the New York Studio School when I attended a retrospective of Chaim Soutine's carcasses. I realized that his imagery only inspired me when painted with smooth fluid, full-bodied, rich paints. I was inspired by Jenny Saville’s explosive treatment of carcasses, from her use of paint. Such volatile handling of paint, like Saville's, commands notice. Conversely, Soutine's application of dry gritty paint in his latter works was disenchanting.
My infatuation with the fluid physicality of paint allows me to juxtapose image and material, contrasting dry ink prints to liquescent paintings. These juxtapositions achieve interesting aesthetic tensions: suspended versus absorbent, natural versus coaxed, chaotic versus untouched, and traditional versus graphical. These tensions stress form and content. Form is the means by which content is made accessible to others (Ben Shahn). Paint does more. It intrinsically communicates direct information––exceeding painters' intentions. My artwork explores paint as a medium and as a message. All paintings embody ideas about paint in the manipulation of materials; yet, not all paintings convey a message of materiality to viewers.
When squeezed out of paint tubes, yellow ocher and raw sienna are at first deceptively similar. However, the refraction levels of these two paints make them surprisingly different when applied to a canvas. This observed color theory leads to my interest in how paint emulates the atmosphere. Layers of colors act as veils––masking, altering, absorbing, and reflecting one another, similar to the way the sun's warm tones veil black deep space, creating a spectrum of color that is reflected off the ocean as a skyscape.
The different skin textures and opacities within models' bodies create infinite formalist objectives for painting. Saville, Lucian Freud, Pierre Bonnard, Van Gogh, and Euan Uglow all paint nudes with intriguing paint application that emphasizes materiality. I incorporated studies of flesh in my early disaster landscapes because flesh colors resonate with my interest in manipulating mucilaginous paints.
Paint moves me to make art; I discovered this incentive while studying at the New York Studio School when I attended a retrospective of Chaim Soutine's carcasses. I realized that his imagery only inspired me when painted with smooth fluid, full-bodied, rich paints. I was inspired by Jenny Saville’s explosive treatment of carcasses, from her use of paint. Such volatile handling of paint, like Saville's, commands notice. Conversely, Soutine's application of dry gritty paint in his latter works was disenchanting.
My infatuation with the fluid physicality of paint allows me to juxtapose image and material, contrasting dry ink prints to liquescent paintings. These juxtapositions achieve interesting aesthetic tensions: suspended versus absorbent, natural versus coaxed, chaotic versus untouched, and traditional versus graphical. These tensions stress form and content. Form is the means by which content is made accessible to others (Ben Shahn). Paint does more. It intrinsically communicates direct information––exceeding painters' intentions. My artwork explores paint as a medium and as a message. All paintings embody ideas about paint in the manipulation of materials; yet, not all paintings convey a message of materiality to viewers.
When squeezed out of paint tubes, yellow ocher and raw sienna are at first deceptively similar. However, the refraction levels of these two paints make them surprisingly different when applied to a canvas. This observed color theory leads to my interest in how paint emulates the atmosphere. Layers of colors act as veils––masking, altering, absorbing, and reflecting one another, similar to the way the sun's warm tones veil black deep space, creating a spectrum of color that is reflected off the ocean as a skyscape.
The different skin textures and opacities within models' bodies create infinite formalist objectives for painting. Saville, Lucian Freud, Pierre Bonnard, Van Gogh, and Euan Uglow all paint nudes with intriguing paint application that emphasizes materiality. I incorporated studies of flesh in my early disaster landscapes because flesh colors resonate with my interest in manipulating mucilaginous paints.
