Continuing through February 27, 2011
Tim Cross prints photographs on watercolor paper that create soft focus landscapes that he marks with gouache. Geometric structures overlay images of worn leather chairs, a curve of I-5 South, and a shabby house overgrown with rose bushes. The landscapes are familiar and mundane, and the blurry quality of his digital Inkjet photos is beside the point. The confluence of gouache and photo, imagined and real, is where the interest lies.
"Roses" is a dark piece, with shiny pools of wet-looking paint buckling the paper. Red blooms are washed in red gouache, which lies across the piece like a spill. Green tint echoes the leaves' color, puddling into oily spots that create a sinister, ruined feel. This piece could have easily been sentimental, but it's not. Loose swathes of added pigment both undermine and enhance these objects of iconic beauty. There is idealism here and decay, both, with lush hues creating a dark undercurrent that brings to mind lust and death and a fallen desire for the ideal.
SOIL
