D
Berman Gallery presents two Texas artists
with contrasting views of landscape.
Katie Maratta's favored media are Graphite,
ink, and Pastels. Her scenes taken from all
over the state evoke a nostalgic sense of
traveling through the countryside. She says
of her work, "My subject matter is the
Texas horizon. My pieces are typically 1 inch
high and 4 feet long...Because the pieces
can not be seen all at once, the viewer has
to 'travel' the work. What I like about these
pieces: They should feel cramped and crowded,
but they manage to convey a surprising sense
of space. They should be corny because they
include elements such as windmills and cows
and pumpjacks, but in this small scale the
cliché becomes fresh again. They allow
me to play with the notion of beginning, middle,
and end in new ways. They are, in fact, a
basic geometry lesson with the verticality
of the viewer complementing the line, squares,
and basic shapes of the horizon and the pictorial
elements strung along it. They are powerful
without being intimidating. They are satisfying
to do and satisfying to look at. They share
a quality with Chinese porcelain of the complete
world that one can hold in one’s hand."
Maratta lives and works in Austin.
Randy
Twaddle's new work revisits imagery he first
started using over twenty years ago - pole-mounted
transformers and the distribution lines that
run to and from them. In this new work, however,
Twaddle focuses on the lines themselves, and
eschews charcoal, a medium he used for 25
years, for the unusual and striking combination
of ink and coffee. In these drawings, Twaddle
pours and "steers" coffee over a
light ink-wash ground, creating images that
evoke tangled tree limbs or shadows of the
silhouetted black ink distribution and telephone
lines above. Twaddle describes his interest
in the distribution lines: "I love to
drive down Houston streets - especially at
dawn or dusk - when the transformers and the
distribution lines and telephone lines are
in silhouette. I'm constantly awed by the
variations of their unintentional beauty and
lyricism. They have a strong musical association
for me, like some trippy score that's been
drawn in the air by an anonymous composer."
Twaddle lives and works in Houston.
Preview
Twaddle's work
Preview
Maratta's work
Press
Page
|
