Modern Vintage Entry: "Undeveloped"

Showing at a gallery has always been something I wanted to do as soon as possible. Until now, I haven't seen many opportunities in the art market. However, I was introduced to a little place called Red Tree Gallery a year or so ago and I couldn't help but see the potential in it. Since then, shows there have come and gone and I had trouble finding a show that fit my work (or rather, one I could work around).
Yesterday, I checked Red Tree's website as I occasionally do, and to my surprise, I found that they are holding a show that my work fits into rather well. The exhibit is entitled "Modern Vintage" and I just knew that this is one I can NOT pass up. Immediately, I began brainstorming a possible composition that would be suitable for an entry. Last week, I found a Brownie Hawk eye camera from the 50's at a local antique store--to me, this seemed to be the perfect centerpiece for a new painting. There was still the question of what to put in the background, though.


Following my desire to break free from the chiaroscuro style of my past pieces, I chose something brighter for the negative space to offset the black of the camera. I recalled how I have always been interested in painting tape and paper because of the way by which it catches light. When I began to set up a composition using this idea, it all clicked.

Below is my preliminary sketch for this new painting I will title "Undeveloped"








I chose the title "Undeveloped" as a way of playing on words as well as a means of provoking conceptual thought through the piece. I have always sought the forms of objects made in the past. Things like this camera catch my eye unlike anything made in the present. In this sense, I feel at times like my mind is undeveloped in comparison to the forms of the current. I have an aesthetic caught up in the ideal shapes of the past... and yet, I have no problem with it yet.




http://www.redtreegallery.net/call/