James Gortner
Faerie God Mothers, Angels, And Wizards (History Paintings)
I get to use all of my painting techniques in this series, from photo-realism, to abstraction, to the experimental processes I favor. I get to do the fantastic, which is to explore human nature, personal mythology, and representational narration through the blending of classic themes, including but not limited to Faeries, Angels, and Wizards. As all fantasy-themed works are, these works too can exist as a metaphor for life, and or an escape into timeless imagination. They can be the viewers life or imagination or they can be the authors life and imagination, and thats where the works true subject becomes tricky.
The works are composed by me, but they include many other voices. To make these works, not only do I paint in a range of painterly hands, but I also cut and collage pieces from a wide range of found paintings by other artists, incorporating them into a new imagined composition. These paintings I include are usually found abandoned by their creators in NYC art school studio cleanouts, on art buildings loading docks, and on the street. All are saved from the brink of oblivion and given a new birth in my work. By layering the face of my wood panels with cut canvas, pieces, and parts of pre-existing found work, I can affect a surface beyond the two-dimensional picture plane and into a conceptual realm, all in a way I could not do on my own. I think life and art is like that. A big organic collaboration of people and forces. These “Characters” or “Creatures” I’ve painted into the works wield this collective meta-sculpture of discarded, reborn energy as a foreground, background, and also as mysterious garb: all an alive, open-ended allegory happening inside and outside the work. A gateway to and from the unknown. To delineate this gateway, I always make rad frames for this work. A painting needs an edge.
It is the patchwork oscillation between action and stillness, known and unknown, implied and explicit, realistic and abstract, optical and flat, natural and supernatural, original and found that makes these paintings so captivating to me. Their complicated and performative content keeps them both contemporary and abstract. All combined, I’ve tried to balance authorship and stewardship, and let these characters themselves evidence an evolution of artistic process. The work embraces a unique visionary narrative - an idiomatic manifestation that has made me its own.