DEFINEART: Art and Sensation

With over thirty-five years of dedicated work, one can understand Michael K. Paxton’s metaphor for growth in art, “You can’t pull on a plant and expect it to grow. You have to nurture it. Be dedicated and invested in order to see results.” Paxton has an extremely strong foundation in life and still life drawing. He can render the most believable bodies, carving realistic beings with luscious curves and muscular flesh. There is no doubt his handwork is masterful, but what sets him apart from the rest is his artistic process. Paxton uses materials such as waxy drafting film, pen and ink allowing accidental flows of washes across a non-absorbent surface to influence his mark making. This tactic allows Paxton freedom as his work springs to life from mistakes and transitions through undetermined mark-making, creating a flow that is natural and bold as it branches out into new exciting directions.

Paxton describes his artistic process as a search for a better way to see and experience space. He reminds the viewer that we are tainted by the technology of the 21^st Century. Technology offers a different experience of reality that becomes more embedded in our culture everyday. As a result, we understand the physical world less. Creating by hand, Paxton trains the eye and hand to understand the information that is available here in the third-dimension word. In fact, the eye and hand have become Paxton’s subject in an abstract sense, a fairly new direction for his formerly representational work.

Paxton creates layers of thin washes that build from previous marks moving spontaneously and instinctually across a large surface. This work is done without using preliminary sketch work, allowing him an uncertainty to grapple with and grow from. This art transcends any preconceived ideas getting to the root of what it means to picture the world.

Paxton’s work is a fluid process that often appears radiating with life forces. Fluidity and movement carve new imagery, like a glacier making a pathway over time showing space and depth to the viewer over a flat surface. Paxton showcases breath taking control through instinctual mark making that builds masses from hard, rigid mountains with cavernous depth and sleek slopes to vaporous clouds of smoke, a delicate wisp moving in all directions across a wall, marks that portray the act of burning or marks reminiscent of streamline bodies of water, sifting cascades flowing and falling in unexpected yet completely natural directions, forces of nature in all of their awe inspiring stages.

Paxton offers a variety of unique perspectives in his abstract drawings and paintings. Each series of work showcases a new inventive process. Some pieces recede with layers of washes, while others take on beautiful properties of nature through a splotchy technique that evokes the subtle pitter-patter of rainfall. Paxton is a visionary to keep an eye out for in Chicago whether his exhibiting work is representational or abstract, each of his works exemplify his stunning and extraordinary drawing skill and incredible talent as an artist.

Similar to Paxton’s large-scale bodies of work, Darryll Schiff paints dramatic and beautiful motion with his camera. Each piece has its undeniable entry point where larger than life it absorbs the viewer. Unlike other still life photographers, whose work is well-composed but ultimately lacking as an immediate reaction, Schiff’s work is a meditation, much like a drawing. This can help explain why both Paxton and Schiff are able to coax the viewer to a prompt response to their work; it is a sensory reaction to feel strongly about the uniquely beautiful perspective that is being offered. The work provokes immediate sensation because it is can be recognized as an experience to stand before and take in reflections of the world that cannot be obtained sheerly by will without the aid of tool or the knowledge to do so. Paxton and Schiff bring audiences into a welcome trance with their incredible skill and most pensive bodies of work.

Michael K. Paxton is a Chicago based artist, see more of his work at:

http://www.michaelkpaxton.com/

You can find Darryll Schiff's work at:

http://www.schiff-art.com/

I'll leave you to look forward to next month's DSFA Featured Artist, Clare E. Rojas, another favorite artist of mine!

-- Lauren Ike

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Friday, January 23, 2015

Art and Sensation

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