Continuing Through May 15, 2011
Whether treated as a deep space penetrated by tangled abstract forms or a shallow space dominated by ordered abstract patterns, the painting surface is the attraction of "Magnetic Fields." Dan Sutherland of Austin begins with discrete bits from still-lifes, historical paintings, organic and geometric shapes, which he crumbles together in large-scale paintings that appear to morph and pulsate, resembling an aerial landscape overrun by pixilated storms. Bands made up of lines of color stream through the street scenes by Kim Cadmus Owens, who strives to fuse physically experienced and techno-mediated realities.
By contrast Barbara Kreft of Minneapolis aims for a surface that's, in her words, "smooth and subtle, like snake skin" emphasizing richly textured, colorful abstract patterns. With straight white lines crisscrossing luminous fields of color, two-dimensional space appears to fold and bend in the shaped paintings by San Antonio artist Richard Martinez. All four artists share labor-intensive processes that manipulate light, color and pattern to play with our illusions.
Southwest School of Art
