I recently published a series of nine studies titled Die Prügelstrafe, or “corporal punishment” in German.
I began working on them in early 2010, before I started on the I Live Here:SF exhibition (that artwork is now the Ephemera series) and completed the final third before the end of the year. They stood in my studio for a long time, placeholders for my thoughts, providing relief from the analysis of everything else around them – new, challenging work to assess and accept.
The studies are small, a little larger than a standard postcard, mounted in my usual fashion. Two are framed. Eight are on naked, clear-primed masonite; one has white gesso ground. These works use a knife as the primary tool for mark-making. Some panels juxtapose graphite in the composition.
There is an analogy of artist’s product to artist’s being in this series. Composition as an embodiment of the artist’s life; their oeuvre the succession of experience gathered through the studio’s device as camera obscura. Individual pieces simple metaphors for the many divisions we employ in time – newness, moments, limbs.
I am currently constructing the next version of these works in the studio.
Study No. 6 (Die Prügelstrafe)
Graphite and acrylic on scored masonite
2010 – 10-013