| Exhibit Description: |
| Fields of Action |
Zeitgeist is pleased to present new works by Nashville area artist Richard Painter. Painter, who currently resides in Smithville, Tennessee, has exhibited in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Germany, Switzerland, and was invited to Israel as a part of a Tennessee Arts Commission artist exchange program.
This exhibition of new works, titled Fields of Action, is a record of the artist’s personal experience. He expresses those experiences with a delicate balance of frailty and friction, a most poignant endeavor in light of current events. The scope here is obviously much broader than only Painter’s experience as this body of work takes on broad meaning for all viewers.
"I see my work as a chronicle of my encounter with life- an attempt at recording what I see and experience as my life unfolds. The most abiding theme in my work is the fragility and tenacity of life. Fragility in these instances is represented by birds, moths, a leaf or a child’s toy. To comment on and heighten the vulnerable nature of their existence, these objects are surrounded by aggressively burned visual fields and thus represent both the vulnerable fragility and the profound tenacity of life. Each work thus represents a view of the field of action in which life takes place. It is the present moment we are all moving through and need to be lovingly aware of."
In this new body of work Painter continues to address recognizable images from the history of art (Velasquez, Carravaggio, and Gericault). These familiar images convey universal themes and we as viewers become aware of their relevance then and now. Notions of time and memory also continue to be major themes in Painter’s work as images of transient beauty and human events are offered up to remind us of the fragile and fleeting nature of life in the present moment. Painter's images serve as record, a memory frozen in time, preserved from the ravages of age, disease, suffering, and other challenges of the physical world.
Richard Painter’s work can be found in the private collections of the CEO of Coca-Cola, the Vice President of Turner Broadcasting, and the President of American General as well as the permanent collection of Tennessee State Museum. Painter’s work was included in the Best of Tennessee exhibit produced by The Tennessee State Museum and in the southern edition of the open studio competition New American Painting. He has also been featured in the Tennessean 2000 Collection and Exhibition, the Installations at Cheekwood Fine Art Museum, and OpenShow 99 at the Oak Ridge Fine Arts Museum where he received the Top Multi Media Award. |
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