Charlotte Nicholson        Paintings / CV / Contact

Snow Blind
Series of 4 paintings
Oil on Canvas
84" x 60"
2002-3





Snow Blind Detail


Snow Blind

Tens of thousands of marks are made on each canvas, all applied with a .00000000001 brush. Each mark is unplanned yet, when viewing the whole, seems to have direction, purpose and meaning. Although the arrangement of the marks is not predetermined, the application is. Each mark receives individual attention. The brush stokes remain small and generic in application removing the hierarchy between the tiny marks. The marks' full effect is felt when the canvases are large enough to envelope the viewer's visual periphery. The sub-total of the vast quantity of these generic abstract marks suddenly becomes bigger, morphing into impressions of landscapes, clouds, steam, fur, a sub-atomic world, and, in the case of the Yellow paintings, atmosphere and light. Each of these 4 paintings measure approximately 7'x 4' (the size symbolic of the body). As the picture plain is larger than the body, the viewer is forced to constantly shift their viewing distance and their eye in order to make sense of the work and to understand what it is they are visually experiencing. The work evolved from a desire to make an unintentional associative image; therefore the mark is applied with intent suggesting both the random and the intuitive while purposeful to elicit association and ambiguity. This prevents the work from being a purely abstract or figurative painting, creating a tension between both worlds.





Snow Blind Installation Detail