TOM JUDD

Remnants
New Paintings

February 18 - March 20, 1999
Artist's reception: Thursday, February 18, 6-8 p.m.

In Tom Judd's first solo exhibition with the gallery, the artist presents a group of paintings inspired by a recent eight day journey down a 100 miles of the Main Fork of the Salmon River in Northern Idaho. Judd's work has been represented in several of the gallery's group shows including the well-received Contemporary Landscape exhibition of 1997. The Remnants paintings demonstrate qualities of Judd's work which are signature for the artist-the odd combinations of materials (tarps, found metals, wood veneer), divided, eccentric, juxtaposed "patches" of imagery and skillful, sensitive use of the oil in its color and application. However, Judd is an explorer and he has discovered new resources to fuel his expeditions.

Of the fifteen to seventeen works which comprise the exhibition, the greater majority contain some painted reference to a bird. The birds are found clinging or perched against vintage swatches of decorative wallpaper as if conjured up in a dream as is seen in the two 48 x 48 inch paintings Woodpecker and Prom Night. The range of bird species, from quail and roadrunners to finches and flycatchers, is delightful. Prom Night's tableaux of information includes a pair of yellow-throated black birds that sit together in the trellis design of one of three or four different floral wallpaper samples. A mountainous landscape with a meandering river floats and rests in the far upper right corner of the composition like a thought bubble. Then, the human presence appears in the painted image of the artist's sister based on a high school yearbook photograph. Judd's representation now twice immortalizes her and fixes her in time with a 60s hairstyle intact. Judd's dripping and washy use of paint conveys the trickle of time and the effect time has on memory.

As many of the paintings offer combinations of still-life with landscape, bird and people portraits together there are also those examples in which an individual is given more central and specific reference. Chief Joseph and William Cody are two such examples as well as the smaller, contained paintings of Bird Head and Speciman in which the head, neck and shoulders of birds, in the manner of bust portraiture, are painted in profile. We are asked by the artist to study the characteristics of a face as they are interpreted by the hand. As scale and distance play such a role in the presentation of these varying depths of field, the intimate and the far away, Judd asks us to use our eyes like binoculars.

Judd has, for several decades now, created paintings in which outdoor and indoor life co-exist. Are we in a room or are we on a mountain? In the majority of the new works, the wallpaper application heightens this indistinction. As we associate wallpaper with domestic design concerns we can also think of the ultimate design of nature. In Bird and Waterfall, a 34 x 60 inch oil on wallpaper and canvas work, a smokey forrest and mountain scene functions as much like a window view as a reminder of our love of the picture on the wall given the image's superimposed position on the wallpaper. In the same painting, the work is divided centrally by the ending of the wallpaper and the beginning of a dramatic waterfall scene. In this illusion of space, a strange transcendental effect is produced. The scratches and graphite drawing on the surfaces of the wallpaper let us know about our own existence. In fact Tom Judd's own graphite signature on the painting becomes a piece of grafitti, in a sense, making the statement "I am here" on the wall that is his painting.

A long time friend of Judd's, Spalding Gray is more than an appropriate voice to evaluate these new paintings. For the gifted storyteller, Gray understands how to skillfully maneuver through open fields of narration.

Tom Judd's new paintings remind me of a Wallace Stevens poem.
They depict a colorful, poetic, outside world, at the same time, they
point very directly to themselves.

Judd has a good eye and a subtle sense of color. He paints like a
poetic naturalist. His collage paintings depict a subtle antiquity so
refreshing in this ironically fatigued millennial age.

Spalding Gray 1999

In Judd's paintings, details and tangents, by degrees of association, weave in and out of each other ultimately creating a much expanded and broader picture. Like a scrapbook or a quilt, each image contributes to a collection of memories.

Gallery contact: Carol McCranie

Preview this exhibition at: www.aaartists.com

email: aaa@agrp.com

Gallery contact: Carol McCranie

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