THE CANVAS-Jan/Feb 2010

by Suzette McAvoy

Tom Paiement, Stew Henderson & William Manning

“In a successful painting everything is integral…all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.” -Richard Diebenkorn

Entropy Aftermath: Tribute 1, mixed media, 13 1/8” x 13 1/8” |  Tom Paiement

 

 

 

 

 

In Remembrance

In 2006, inspired by a cache of old tin ceiling panels scavenged from the building adjacent to his studio in Bath, artist Tom Paiement began a series of large-scale collages that would consume the next 18 months of his life. Collectively titled Entropy, the three works that resulted from this intensive period of creativity are monumental in scale, sweeping in content, and stunningly constructed.

Addressing themes of war, environmentalism, technology, consumerism, and the human spirit, the Entropy series is nothing less than a summation of the artist’s worldview at the outset of the twenty-first century. The series has been described by Susan Danly, a curator at the Portland Museum of Art, as “one of the most important pieces of contemporary art to come out of Maine in recent years.”

In the wake of their construction, the artist embarked on a series of smaller collages entitled Entropy Aftermath. Figures of soldiers and vases of flowers are the predominate imagery in these recent works, which were created from found materials combined with cut paper and painted elements. “The three big pieces led into an enormous number of ideas related to how I utilized materials,” says Paiement.

Tribute I, the first piece in the series, was prompted by the artist’s only son turning 18 and the artist’s being forced to consider the possibility of his child having to go to war. In this work, the rounded red blossoms suggest the traditional poppies of remembrance, their delicate stems contrasting sharply with the roughly textured surface of the metal mesh composing the vase. Against a background of news clippings, the word “home” is apparent in the lower left. For the artist, this work is “about the ying/yang of life” and “the enormous tragedy of losing a kid in war.”

At 67, Paiement says, “I go wherever the work leads me. I’ve nothing more to prove—this gives me tremendous freedom to play around.”

 

 

 

Muddy Pass, 2008, acrylic and marbled paper on panel, 16” x 18” | Stew Henderson

Pattern Mapping

Artist Stew Henderson has long taken inspiration from diverse sources. Often it is his discovery of some found material that provides the spark for a new body of work. Such is the case with The Maps, a series of paintings completed in 2008 and exhibited that year in a solo show at the Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland.
The Maps originated with Henderson’s finding a number of century-old geographic survey maps among his father’s possessions after his death in 2003. The maps dated from 1909 to 1910, and showed mining activity in the Monarch-Tomichi districts of Colorado. “I have no idea why he had these mining maps,” says the artist, “other than the possibility that he was attracted to their simple graphic beauty, the same as I am now.”
The Maps paintings range in size from 16 by 16 inches to more than 4 feet square. Their compositions are nearly direct translations of areas in the maps, selected by the artist for the particular arrangement of shapes within a given quadrant. To this found arrangement of forms, the artist has added his own colors and patterning. In several of the works, such as Muddy Pass, he uses marbleized paper as a ground for painted shapes, capitalizing on the paper’s resemblance to the natural striations found in rock. “In essence,” says the artist, “these paintings are representational alterations of abstract images that were derived from geographic information.”
In his recent past, Henderson has employed, for his series titled Graphica, discarded 8-foot rolls of commercially printed paper that he found discarded at a local transfer station. And in 2007 he created a room-sized installation, The Parent Project, that included an Old Town canoe, a collection of tape-recorded birdsongs, and 322 New Yorker magazine covers. Playing with concepts of perception, transformation, and the visual representation of the physical world, Henderson’s map series exhibits the strong graphic qualities and inventive approach to materials that have become a hallmark of his work.

 

 

 

 

Painting 168, 2009, acrylic and collage on Masonite, 24” x 24” | William Manning

Ideal Balance

William Manning’s art demonstrates an ideal balance between order and controlled chaos. For more than five decades, he has created highly original paintings that spring from his deep love of the natural world and of his native state of Maine. Monhegan Island, where he has long been a part-time resident, has been a particularly rich source of inspiration.
The island’s diverse geography and variable atmosphere, as well as its seasonal rhythms and physical beauty, inform Manning’s abstract compositions. A close viewing of these elegant works reveals subtle variations in surface texture, achieved by the artist through diverse paint applications and the integration of cut and torn paper. These collaged elements derive from gestural, freely painted sketches that he purposefully creates as raw material for the finished paintings.  
Lately Manning has been using the rich brown of the Masonite panels on which he works, to skillful effect. On sections left unpainted, the brown serves as an additional color in his palette and another texture in his aesthetic arsenal. In a number of recent paintings, including Painting 168, the unpainted outer edge also doubles as a frame.
Color is Manning’s forte. He orchestrates an amazing range of hues within an individual work and does not shy away from employing hot shades like magenta, orange, and egg-yolk yellow; effectively conveying, for instance, the brilliance of a sunset sky or rising dawn without literally depicting the event.
Throughout his career, William Manning has created paintings that synthesize the tenets of abstract expressionism and cubism, while evoking an emotional response from the viewer through formal means. His recent series of paintings are resonant examples of the emotive power of abstract art—they reveal an artist working at the top of his game, in complete command of his materials and confident in the strength of his inner aesthetic voice.