CULMINATIONS - artist Clay Wainscott
|
review
|
|
by Kevin Nance
|
Clay Wainscott is a unique figure on the Lexington art scene. Every time I see his work, a good selection of which is currently on view in “Culmination,” the handsome new Arts Connect presentation at Central Bank’s John G. Irvin Gallery, I’m struck by its consistency, its technical innovation, and its luminous, spectral, electric beauty. While his subject matter is often intentionally mundane (flowers, vegetables, an overpass), Wainscott’s uniquely stylized way of revealing its underlying strangeness has me feeling as if I’ve never seen such things before, even though they’ve been right there in front of my nose my entire life.
You can’t talk about his work without first discussing his technique. As I wrote in my 2022 profile of the artist in this publication, “Wainscott paints by applying layers of red, blue, and yellow acrylic paint to his large canvases, one color at a time. These primary colors are diluted with a polymer medium to the point of transparency. Stacked on top of one another, they meld and mix and transform, achieving varying degrees of opacity with the addition of white. The secondary colors — plummy purples, bruised-peach pinks, precious-stone teals, earthy burnt oranges — float up through the overlaid primary colors from back to front . . . [producing] an eerily resonant, glowing effect, like stained glass lit from behind.”
The effect is strikingly original and often hypnotically seductive. The white lines that Wainscott uses to trace objects — including, here, people, such as a waitress at the much-lamented Alfalfa Restaurant and a running child, along with his shadow — lend them a ghostly presence that feels supernatural, even holy. (Wainscott’s entire project as an artist could be seen as revealing the magic of everyday things.) Floating in their layers of acrylic medium, the liquid colors seem to flow and ripple on the canvases like rivers and tributaries, resolving before our eyes at a distance of about five or six feet — a bit of a problem in the Irvin Gallery, which consists of two somewhat narrow corridors.
No matter. Standing in front of a Wainscott painting, I always feel as if I’m in the presence of a master of technique who’s doing something very complicated and knows exactly how to do it. We are in capable hands.
You can’t talk about his work without first discussing his technique. As I wrote in my 2022 profile of the artist in this publication, “Wainscott paints by applying layers of red, blue, and yellow acrylic paint to his large canvases, one color at a time. These primary colors are diluted with a polymer medium to the point of transparency. Stacked on top of one another, they meld and mix and transform, achieving varying degrees of opacity with the addition of white. The secondary colors — plummy purples, bruised-peach pinks, precious-stone teals, earthy burnt oranges — float up through the overlaid primary colors from back to front . . . [producing] an eerily resonant, glowing effect, like stained glass lit from behind.”
The effect is strikingly original and often hypnotically seductive. The white lines that Wainscott uses to trace objects — including, here, people, such as a waitress at the much-lamented Alfalfa Restaurant and a running child, along with his shadow — lend them a ghostly presence that feels supernatural, even holy. (Wainscott’s entire project as an artist could be seen as revealing the magic of everyday things.) Floating in their layers of acrylic medium, the liquid colors seem to flow and ripple on the canvases like rivers and tributaries, resolving before our eyes at a distance of about five or six feet — a bit of a problem in the Irvin Gallery, which consists of two somewhat narrow corridors.
No matter. Standing in front of a Wainscott painting, I always feel as if I’m in the presence of a master of technique who’s doing something very complicated and knows exactly how to do it. We are in capable hands.
Waitress/Alfalfa
|
Running Child
|
The danger is that the medium can become the message. In “Culmination,” as always, Wainscott applies his signature style to all of his subjects, which is potentially both an asset — what artist doesn’t want to be instantly recognizable? — and, I’m afraid, something of a curse, at least for the viewer. This level of consistency in an artist’s approach can rob it of surprise. Repetition breeds familiarity, of course, but it can also breed ennui.
And as Wainscott has said more than once, he regards his subject matter as all but beside the point; it’s not what he sees, but rather how he sees it, that counts. This emphasis on the act of seeing, as opposed to what’s been seen, has led him to choose certain subjects — including, here, not one or two but an entire half dozen paintings of a chair in a diner, along with a seventh showing a salt and pepper setup on the diner table — that might leave some viewers baffled. They might ask, “Why paint that?” The artist might answer: “It’s as good as anything else.”
And as Wainscott has said more than once, he regards his subject matter as all but beside the point; it’s not what he sees, but rather how he sees it, that counts. This emphasis on the act of seeing, as opposed to what’s been seen, has led him to choose certain subjects — including, here, not one or two but an entire half dozen paintings of a chair in a diner, along with a seventh showing a salt and pepper setup on the diner table — that might leave some viewers baffled. They might ask, “Why paint that?” The artist might answer: “It’s as good as anything else.”
Three Chairs with Table
|
Setup/Red Table
|
Two Chairs Back to Back
|
I can’t quite agree. In representational art at least, subject matter matters, to viewers if not to artists. There’s a reason we’re drawn to certain paintings in a gallery and not to others, even when they’re rendered with the same unified vision. And if subject matter doesn’t matter to the artist, why not dispense with representation and go whole hog into abstraction? (This idea is sure to horrify Wainscott, who abhors the Abstract Expressionists the way God hates sin.) Certainly the paintings in “Culmination” that trigger my most lustful covetousness — that make me long to possess them — are the ones in which Wainscott’s X-ray vision happens to fall on something that’s already beautiful, mysterious and/or magical, then proceeds to elevate and enhance those qualities to a new, higher, perhaps celestial, perhaps astral plane. I’m speaking of the two flower paintings, in which two fairly commonplace blooms — a dandelion and a rose — feel exalted enough to be eligible as religious iconography. A painting of a spiral case at Ward Hall is similarly gorgeous, as is one of some succulent-looking red and yellow peppers resting in a sink.
Rose
|
Dandelion
|
Spiral Stair/Ward Hall
|
Chilis on Sink
|
Best of all is “Studio 122,” Wainscott’s take on the building at the corner of Short and Upper that housed his workspace for several decades before he was recently displaced. It’s a handsome facade, for sure, with 19th-century features and plenty of charm; any faithful depiction would be delightful. But the love in this painting, the feeling of identification, of loss and longing — especially if you know the painter’s history with the place — is undeniably special. Maybe subject matter does matter to him, after all.
Studio 122
