Grant Hottle: So Domestic

So Majestic 2010 Grant Hottle (via Half/Dozen Gallery)

When seeing the Grant Hottle exhibit, So Domestic at Half/Dozen, my first thought is how well his paintings manage a large scale, especially knowing the artist works in a cramped space.

Cramped Apartment 2010 Grant Hottle (via Half/Dozen)

Even in Cramped Apartment, that Hottle admits, "is the kind of space I find myself in most of the time. My home is full of art, books, tables - stuff. It's lived in...I wanted it to feel closed in and cluttered like my studio", it's painted in a way that uses it's size - a painting of stacked objects in a tight space but painted so that it reads from 10 feet away.

Looking closer you'll find that most of his paintings are deeply layered and reveal strokes perhaps not bigger than an inch. And perhaps this is what attracts me most to Hottle's work: the ability to articulate tangible, modern compositions relying on traditional color, shapes and elements.

Yes there is the strokey, and the electric color palette - but everything holds together as that first believable idea. Hottle's paintings are a lot about realness:

The term 'real' is so subjective. I've been thinking about this specifically in the relation to the home because in moving from place to place, the space I think of as my home bleeds from one structure to the next. So where is my real home? Is it where I am now or where I am from? Isn't it a construction of both?...the greenhouse in So Domestic only exists in the context of this painting. It was never a direct observation or photograph of a place you could walk into. It is a construction, but is no less real for being so.

For complete images and discussions with the artist, visit the Half/Dozen Gallery website.Or visit KBOO's Art Focus for discussion with Half/Dozen's Timothy Mahan and artist, Grant Hottle.

Gray Area

Lisa Kowalski Gray Area 2010 (via Half/Dozen)

Ruminating on Abstraction, check out the large wet-on-wet abstract works of Lisa Kowalski at Half/Dozen. It's up until October 23rd. A good throw back to the Abstract Expressionists. And I mean good because these 60" images breathe.

Mary Heilmann (via Un Bloody)

I can't help but feel alot of young abstract work feels stiff, copy-cat or caught up on being non-representational for lack of anything else (this coming from a painter who is fixated on representation!). It might take a career to understand how paint relationships work. I can't understand how artists at the student-level ever begin with Abstraction. Where are they working from?

Even though Abstract Expressionism was explored and absorbed into a sort of mainstream art language, I think it might be one of the more difficult things to explore.

Semi-Related: A friend of mine keeps pointing out that a painting I bought from a local painter bears a resemblance to some Mary Heilmann. It's true, but both their bodies of work (and concepts) only intersect at the stripes.

UPDATED: See Lisa Kowalski s installation shots via OpenWide PDX.