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PATRICK MALIN - ARTIST
STATEMENT
Re: the "Nature" paintings
For these oil paintings I worked outdoors directly on site, or "en
plein air", in a sketch-like manner on sized paper. This method dates
back to the beginnings of landscape painting in Europe and
America. Artists once worked like this to learn, or study, from
Nature. My work is all about apprehending Nature, or what is left of it
- of the natural landscape, that is landscape that isn't domesticated
(feeling) but is closer to it's natural, or wild, state. I often
go on excursions to find remote places to paint - to places like the
Mojave Desert, southern Arizona, and the Adirondack Mountains. When not
on these excursions, I work closer to home in Rhode Island.
While the aesthetic of the sketch is the essence of my work, I try to
be truthful more to the direct feeling of the landscape than to it's
physical form or likeness. So the paintings can be considered abstract
in that sense. To me, painting is a humble pursuit - using the modest
materials of paint and paper to make an homage/gesture about the
natural world.
Sept. 2011
Re: the abstract paintings (pre 2004)
Prior to 2004 I was doing abstract paintings that centered on the
connection between color and light. The patterned arrangements of
shapes in these paintings function as stand-ins for human or angelic
figures like those in renaissance and baroque paintings, while
the shapes of the canvases are drawn from old roadside signs and other
related forms. In these paintings I am interested in the great
themes of art history, but as filtered through my experience of
the mundane, banal, man-made world. I like to think of these as
religious images for a disillusioned secular audience. But,
also possibly as a kind of landscape painting for America.
January, 2008
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