Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Neue Bilder

A Visiting Artist from Korea has mounted a beautifully executed exhibition of 20 white canvasses here on campus in Logan. The canvasses arrived direct from Utrecht Linens on our loading dock two weeks ago and went straight into the gallery. Other than a single number on each, the canvasses are unchanged from the way Utrecht sent them out. I've never been much of an art collector, but this show is so impressive, I've made arrangements to purchase the entire thing. Twenty flawless canvasses do have an eerie kind of beauty to them and I'm at least a little sad that as soon as I get my hands on them, I'll begin the process of screwing them up with a lot of painting.


It's easy to forget, but fundamentally, I am a painter. And now that I've been back in Utah for about 15 weeks or so, I'm actually getting some work done too. My studio here in Logan is less than a fifth the size of where I was working in Essen, and my employer here seems to think I have nothing better to do than teach classes and write an unending stream of "mission statements," but in spite of everything, I have managed to get back to work. I'm busy now finishing a series of paintings I began this Spring in Germany and left more or less intentionally incomplete. The work is going far better than I expected and I'm already making plans for new paintings.



And with my soon to be accomplished purchase of the decidedly "conceptual" exhibition now up in the Twain Tippetts Exhibition Hall in the Fine Arts building, I shall not want for surfaces to paint on. If everything continues to go well in the studio, I'm planning a trip to San Francisco in the early Spring that will lead eventually to an exhibition there in the coming year(s.) I can only hope that any exhibitions I wind up doing will be as successful in the sales department as the one currently on view here in Logan.



2 comments:

Shawn B. said...

What an excellent idea to paint on those beautiful canvases. I believe they probably feel unfufilled at the moment.

Christopher T. Terry said...

Shawn, I wound up buying the whole show and acting as a middle man, selling the canvases to students. I neglected to take a mark up, so I'm not making anything on the deal, but it is a good feeling to provide this service. ct