Martin Bromirski, Untitled, acrylic, sand & paper on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, 2012
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Martin Bromirski about his work and studio process.
Bromirski notes that he starts with "Something to disrupt the blank canvas. Most of [the paintings] get taken to the sink and scraped at some point... much or all of the paper/sand/paint on a painting will come off... lots of unexpected things happen. Cuts and holes get created in that process... they end up as is, or get patched with canvas or old clothing, or become an important element and sometimes expanded."
The gallery notes that Bromirski, LaBine, and Riley share a free-wheeling, fractured sense of space, time, and reality, which they investigate in their work by stretching the boundaries of their practice."
Sharon Butler posts about "the open proposition in contemporary abstraction." She writes: "There is a studied, passive-aggressive incompleteness to much of the most interesting abstract work that painters are making today. But the subversion of closure isn't their only priority. They also harbor a broader concern with multiple forms of imperfection... The painters take a meta approach that refers... back to the process of painting itself."
Starting with James Lord's observations of Giacometti's intense process, a process that ended in abandonment, Rubinstein tests the theory of "provisional painting," asking: "What does it mean to believe that in order to create a work of art one must entertain the 'permanent possibility' of abandoning and to believe that something called 'freedom' inheres in this situation?"
Edited by artist Brett Baker, Painters' Table highlights writing from the painting blogosphere as it is published and serves as a platform for exploring blogs that focus primarily on the subject of painting.