West End Backside, bricolage no. 2

"West End Backside, bricolage no. 2" 2010
Oil on canvas, found object assemblage. 24 x 44 in.

This painting was entered in the 2nd annual juried exhibit at the Trillium Arts Centre in Travelers Rest, SC. It was awarded the 1st place honors at the show's opening and will be on display through September 11th. The piece includes the other two 16 x 20 inch oil panels which, together with their companion piece, West End Backside, bricolage no. 1 (see below) was conceived as a triptych landscape panorama. These two were made into a diptych and combined with artifacts from the location. No. 1 is currently on display at the Fuller Gallery Featured Artist Exhibit, SC Botanical Gardens.

I am also gearing up for a show at the Studio@620 gallery in St. Petersburg, FL opening the 13th of November. Here is a statement I developed for this piece:

In this present work I have combined two visual art traditions; realist urban landscape, painted entirely on location through direct observation, and found object assemblage of artifacts, collected from within the space pictured in the painting. This painting/assemblage is the second one from this location.* Together, they form a triptych arrangement of this view.

In using this process, I have tried to form a more complete sense of place. The paintings themselves could be viewed alone for their surface content; a painterly “moment” of time and space at a specific location. However, when seen together with the other objects in the assemblage, they become part of an abstract composition. Lines of motion, shapes and color in the painted image inform the arrangement of pieces of debris. The physical process of painting affords me the opportunity to study and observe over long periods of time.

I spend about 2 and a half hours each day sitting at the location and during “stretch breaks” I walk around in the vacant areas and in between buildings, helping myself to any discarded things which capture my attention. Some objects are just purely abstract in terms of color, texture and shape. Others are more literal, or sometimes more metaphorical in their relationship to my perceived understanding of the natural environment and human presence. Creating the paintings "on location" adds my own presence to the historical reality of that place, and the canvas and paint are transformed into yet more artifact. Together with the found objects, all are combined and on display become a form of contemporary urban archeology.

Because this work refers to a specific location, the surface representation often evokes stories and reflections from viewers. I learned, for example, that the building on the right (with the wooden staircase outside) used to host some pretty wild Halloween parties. One passerby told me of the prevalence of brothels in this part of town, many decades ago. I enjoy hearing stories like these.

I started this work in early December of this year and completed the first of three paintings by early spring. When I returned to finish the other two in this series, a building had been torn down and I was confronted with a large sumac tree which had decided to grow dead center in the composition. I kind of like that tree now, having gotten to know it so well.

Back on the trail...

Now that the weather has picked up and our garden is on its way, time to venture out again and pick up the trail. I will be returning to various locations along what is known here as the Swamp Rabbit Trail, a "rail to trails" type project that has seen the conversion of an abandoned freight and passenger rail line to a pedestrian walkway and bike path. The trail passes through the once vibrant but now mostly decrepit "textile crescent" west and north of the city of Greenville, SC. I will expand on my previous efforts of combining found objects from various location with realist artwork of urban factories and artifacts in bricolage assemblage. The artwork is a point of entry and departure for inquiry into the social, historical and cultural realities of the contemporary past and of the present conditions shaping the urban cityscape. Bricks and rust, plastic, metal and glass with oil painting.

West End Backside Bricolage, No. 1

This painting was just selected for the "Greenville Seen" juried exhibit hosted by the Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville, SC.
Exhibit opening on Friday, January 15th at the MAC Gallery and will be on exhibit through Feb. 26th.

I've started a new series, comprised of a panoramic view of the West End of Greenville, from Rhett St., behind Main St. and Augusta Rd. This part of town is not often seen and will likely be gone in years to come as new buildings obscure the view. This is the first of the series, designed as a triptych, with a small addition of some artifacts collected behind the buildings at the bottom of each piece similar to much of my recent work. The artifacts are from a wooden drawer and a bit of demolished brickwork with some paint fragments on it. The sky was completed all at once on all three panels. I have also completed the under painting on the other two, and have started the building detail plain air work on the second (middle) panel. I have also posted a new statement at my website DS McCurry Fine Arts Studio.

Thank you for your visitations

To one and all who stopped by my new studio on the 7th and 8th of November, thank you. This was my first "open studio" experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with over 50 individuals who stopped by on the Greenville, SC circuit. I always enjoy talking about my work and look forward to continued contact with many of you. Stop by again, anytime.

In Search of the Ancon

(Albert Bierstadt. 1889. Wreck of the "Ancon" in Loring Bay, Alaska. Oil on paper, mounted on Masonite. 14 1/8 x 19 3/4 inches). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

I am beginning a new project which will involve traveling to Loring, Alaska (Naha Bay) to visit the location of the wreck of the steamship Ancon on August 29th, 1889. The wreck was captured in an oil sketch by the American artist Albert Bierstadt. I believe that he later finished the sketch in his studio, likely in San Francisco or possibly in New York. The painting now hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and I have seen it several times.

The boiler tanks (or what is left of them) are supposed to be visible at low tides, and I intend to travel to Naha Bay, stay at Loring for several days and complete some oil sketches of roughly the same size that Bierstadt did (14.5 x 19 inches). This size comes up several times in his catalog of work and is, I believe, the size of his oil on paper sketch work. I intend to use the Schoellershammer oil painting paper (108 lb) which they still make in 14.25 x 19 inch size (10 sheets to a pad).

I am just starting to research Bierstadt's travels of this period. This trip was his third (and would be his final) trip out west to collect ideas for new paintings. He had suffered several major life and career setbacks at this point (the most recent of which was his rejection from the Paris Exposition in the same month as this trip) so he must not have been in the best frame of mind. Robert Campbell also reaches this conclusion in his book "In Darkest Alaska" (2007, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press), noting the somber colors and more realistic scale of the subject and the relatively unmajestic, failure tinged content of the composition. I think the reality of his life finally entered his art-making at this point. The 19th cent. romanticism, of which Bierstadt was a leading figure, owing in no small part to his German heritage and art education, was receding like the tide, which ultimately broke the back of the grounded Ancon and perhaps Bierstadt's spirit with it.

Present day Naha Bay near Loring, with the wreckage of the Ancon still visible off the point. (photo courtesy of Naha Bay Preservation Coalition).

Final version of "Homeless"

Formal title: Landmark (Swamp Rabbit Series): Homeless. 2009. Oil on canvas, metal, wood, glass, plexiglass, cloth, found objects assemblage. 19 x 35 x 4.5 inches.

This piece finally came together in time for the opening at the Trillium Arts Centre. It went on a little journey for a couple of weeks, on loan to the Eliot Pratt Center at Goddard College for the MFA student show during the Fall residency. The title, "Homeless," is suggestive of my experiences with an individual who took refuge in the rail car for a few days while I was doing the painting. There was evidence of other people using the car for various purposes also, but I will not go into details about that. The small pillow (or mattress as it appeared to one person), hanging from the top edge of the picture frame is after Robert Rauschenberg's work "Canyon." It fit with the homeless theme and reflected the dirty old bedding I found in the car. The archeology of these locations fuels my interest in the subject matter, expanding my understanding of the context of the location. The historical dimensions, as well as the present-oriented realities of real-estate, property and public/private domains, all contribute to the making and presentation of this and other pieces in the series.

Opening tonight at Trillium Art Centre

Tonight at 7 pm for those in the area is the opening of the Plein Air Artists group show with my special exhibition of work from the Swamp Rabbit series. All of the pieces below, plus a watercolor done along the trail and a few photographs are included. Further information at:

Trillium Arts Centre, Travelers Rest, SC