Tag: #contemporaryart

Virtual Drawing, 2021

lhorton2014Leave a comment

Carole Kim and I met in 2011 at the premiere of Wadada Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers at the RedCat Theater in Los Angeles, CA. She participated in the performance by contributing to the video presentation on the huge screens behind the stage where the musicians played.

Her work has always attracted me because she deals in the interaction of layers. In my own drawings, I think in terms of layers and outgrowths. In static drawing, in which I participate, I cannot create, motion and change and depth except in the act of drawing that becomes frozen and, in essence, unchangeable. Only in the viewing does the potential for an image’s morphing in the mind’s eye exist.

This video realizes a dream that I have had about how my drawings can be. Without Carole, I would never have been able to achieve that dream.

Corners Series, 2008

lhorton2014Leave a comment

The concept of these drawings germinates once again in minimalism, the non-objective, and self-referentiality.

Self-referentiality was and is, for me, a mainstay in an artist’s orientation in approaching any work at all. Configuring it is a means to appreciate the process as it goes forth and increase the artist’s mindfulness of the direction of the process.

Each drawing is colored pencil on black gouache. Each measures 30 inches in height by 44 inches in width.

Corners, blue, gray, brown
Corners gray, purple, orange, green
Corners green, purple, brown
Corners slate blue and gray

Prepositional Drawings, 2008

lhorton2014Leave a comment

These drawings are all white marker on black gouache on white rag paper. They measure 30 inches in height by 44.5 inches in width.

Even though Open and Closed are included in this series, the titles evoke a spare direction that is nearly prepositional.

True to form, this series deals with the minimalism and directness inherent in my “training” as an artist. I had to learn to see before I could really SEE.

Across
Closed
Down
In
Open
Out
Up

Three Geometric Drawings, 2002

lhorton2014Leave a comment

These are in a Private Collection in Charleston, SC. They are 22.25 inches square approximately and are charcoal pencil on rag paper.

They are a portrait of my divorce. The divorce not only involved my husband and me, but also, more importantly, my son.

Approach
Confrontation
Settlement

Coming Alive Again, 2004

lhorton2014Leave a comment

These six drawings were a valiant effort to open up the thrill of creation. The wood template was still in use but beautifully, as if really alive and flexible. They are all mixed media on paper, sixty inches tall and are in two parts which make the width forty-five inches. Visually, they have a connection to the symmetry of the body, in the same way at the last of the series Traveling With Angels did and the entire series of Unknowing Innocence demonstrated.

#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6

Branch Shadows 1-8, 2021

lhorton2014Leave a comment

These black and white drawings are seminal to becoming settled in my new studio.

The branch from the dead tree outside the back door of my new abode was going to be thrown away. The person who sold me my living and working space was aware of my work; he held it up one day and asked me if I wanted it; I said, yes. And I drew a picture of the branch. It was the beginning shape to my new vocabulary.

Four Panels, Mountain and Branches, 2021

lhorton20141 Comment

These panels reflect my new environment. The mountain “lines” represent the Berkshires in MA. And the branches images come from a template I made of a drawing I did of a branch broken off a dead tree/bush once planted outside my door.

The incorporation of the drawings into the panel format demonstrates the influence of Japanese panel paintings from the turn of the 20th century.

Four Panels, Mountains and Branches 1-4, 2021, 60 inch high by total 91.75 inches width, colored pencil on black rag paper
Mountain and Branches 1, 2021
Mountain and Branches 2, 2021
Mountain and Branches 3, 2021
Mountain and Branches 4, 2021
Mountain and Branches, 2021, detail 2
Mountain and Branches, 2021, detail 1

Installation, 1981

lhorton2014Leave a comment

This installation image showing velvet going horizontally and lanyard vertically occurred at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA, in a Faculty Show.

This is also the only time it has been created and was a combination of the materials I had been working with since I went to CalArts and later used in my exhibits at Claire S. Copley Gallery and San Jose State University in the mid-seventies.

The velvet is far more expressively handled because it is soft and pliable and represents, in essence, my femininity.

The dimensions of the BCC installation are seventy inches high by sixty-six inches width and probably six inches at its deepest point, where the velvet was bent out into space in a curve shape.

Pushpins hold the elements to the wall.

And it is based on the principles of the lanyard piece originally created in the corner of Gallery A-102 at CalArts, whereby the vertical length plus the molding equals my height in inches and the horizontal length is equals sixty-six inches, the width of my arm span.

Installation, lanyard and pushpins, each side 70″ h by 66″ w, 1970

Beginning Painting, 2007

lhorton2014Leave a comment

There is never enough “beginning.” I was desperately seeking a means to dissolve the edges of the geometric templates at this time.

As with any language, the characters are difficult to re-work, re-make into new means of communicating.

Each part is sixteen inches square. The paintings are done with acrylic with some grease pencil enhancement.