Statement
I was a printmaker in college and in graduate school,
and I love making prints, but after school it became clear that owning
a press would be too cumbersome for me, so I began painting in earnest.
I was teaching severely disabled adults in those days, and I really
loved the work they made. It was uncomplicated, uncontrived, and had
an immediacy and joy that reminded me of some of my teachers at UC Davis:
Roy DeForest, Bob Arneson, and Luis Azeceta come to mind. So, my own
work tended toward the uncomplicated and childlike. I haven't many examples
of this on my site, but you will get a sense of it in some of the "archive"
gallery.
Eventually I began teaching at Cogswell College, and my students necessarily
needed to learn realism. I have always been able to draw, and while
my interest in drawing has been varied I have held realism as the honest
test of a draftsman. I quickly became the primary Figure Drawing instructor
at school and used the opportunity to study and practice realistic rendering.
My own work moved through a series of ideas about story and the emotional
potential of an obviously narrative body of work. I spent five years
creating images with an elaborate varnish that required a respirator
and hours of sanding to achieve. It was quite amazing to look at, but
it took a physical toll on me and I had to abandon the technique. I
decided to become an oil painter in the tradition of 19th-century artists,
that is, I would work realistically within the conventions of my time,
in oil paint on canvas or panel, with no tricks or gimmicks to hide
an uncertain hand.
This, um, "declaration" resulted in a series of still-lifes
and landscapes that you can see on the site. I have been surprised that
emotive content and even narrative was implied, clearly implied, in
those still-lifes. At exhibitions I've heard many comments about the
emotional or even autobiographical content of what I had assumed were
mere paintings of objects - something I hadn't expected but was gratified
to note.
My newer work is a continued exploration of the potential of realism
in painting. At some point I noticed that I was including fire as an
element whenever the opportunity arose. I had been interested in landscapes
of natural "disasters", like floods and dust storms and so
on; fire would often turn up in my search for references, and, well,
I just started painting fire a lot. So, I bought some matchbooks and
lit them on fire, like a ten-year-old boy would do, and took pictures
of it. This resulted in a series of small paintings on shaped panels.
The idea of painting on wood, then, led to yet another group of paintings
that include fire in odd situations.
I continue to paint situations, objects, and odd moments, at times all
three together in the same work. It is my hope that the paint itself
is memorable on the surface, and that the things I paint will amuse,
delight, and perhaps even provoke those who see them.
Reid Winfrey
