Using oil, acrylic, resin and encaustic, the artists in southwest NET: painting have distinct attitudes regarding the material qualities of paint and color. While Stan Kaplan’s bold colors and marks are dynamic and expressive, his thin layers of oil paint cause his canvases to remain smooth and flat. This contrast between gesture and physical weight enables him to play with traditional notions of deep pictorial space. Jane Callister also encourages viewers to indulge in pictorial space, generated by her candy-colored flowing pools of vibrant color. Her splashing technique emphasizes the fluidity of acrylic paint and maintains viewers’attention on the surface of these apocalyptic “landscapes.” Using encaustic paint to interpret abstracted forms and shapes from nature, Lisa Marie Sipe relishes the capacity of the waxy material to trap color and light. Tom Walsh’s compositions consist of two layers of shapes superimposed on one another. His mosaiclike compositions of flat, interlocking, tiny color fields float above the organic wood-grain pattern of his birch ground. This sense of carefully ordered layering comes into play for Henry Schoebel and Linda Besemer as well. Schoebel traces his process on the surface of the canvas while exploring a shallow painted space. Besemer carries even further the idea that each layer inhabits space by constructing her paintings out of the paint itself, with no additional support. All of these artists provide refreshing responses to the age-old question of the relationship between the figure and the ground.

This exhibition makes connections among sensibilities rather than styles. Varied though they may appear, these paintings all negotiate between the intuitive and the calculated, the chaotic and the organized, the imaginary and the concrete. The exhibition is organized along a spectrum bracketed by the gestural spontaneity of Kaplan on one end and the methodical construction of Besemer on the other. Within the spectrum, artists Callister, Walsh, Sipe, and Schoebel use planning and chance to varying degrees to guide their creative process, raising questions regarding restriction and freedom. Clearly influenced by the aesthetics of the digital age, these artists also use colors that ride the line between the natural and the artificial, suggesting that we have grown so accustomed to plastic and synthetic hues that they too almost seem natural.

The works featured in southwest NET: painting demonstrate the vibrancy and validity of abstract painting today, in a world that seems constantly at risk if not on the brink of disaster both locally and globally. Unlike painters of previous generations, burdened by self-conscious cynicism, these artists embrace the romance of painting. They use the inherent potential of the medium of paint to express the tensions of our volatile world. In this way, meaning becomes as fluid and expansive as their medium.

This is the tenth in SMoCA's series of exhibitions featuring work by innovative artists in the southwest.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by Adventures in Art, in memory of co-founder Jane Joseph; Rachel and Gerald Blank; Eric Jungermann and Family and the SMoCA Salon.

Brochure made possible in part with the support of Phyllis and Richard Stern, in honor of Walter Goldschmidt.