The Knapp Gallery is pleased to welcome back R. Michael Walsh and introduce new team member Brian Smith. No bantamweights here! The “tale of the tape” asserts two aggressive artistic pugilists. Opposing styles of process and presentation makes for an energetic contrast. Despite a dichotomy there is a harmony between the two. Very much like the yin and yang of eastern philosophy, these two bodies of work complement each other.
Walsh is a heady cat when you get him to talk. He's evasive, especially with phone calls. Get him alone though and he'll “get with” you about what he does. Mike's got definite ideas about what he's doing and where he's going. Employing the 90-10 rule, studying the painting 90 percent of the time and actually working on the painting only 10 percent of the time, Walsh believes contemplation is paramount to getting the job done. He has a remarkable skill for getting an idea out onto the canvas strongly and holding onto it deep into the painting. Visually, he'll give you a hard line and edge, while simultaneously offering organics and life of a creature.
Exacting a keen awareness, creating dimension through underlayment, R. Michael Walsh builds layer upon layer. Add a final layer of stained glass vignettes and presto! Perfection! Despite the intricate and defined nature of Mike's stained glass webbing, he evidences tons of freedom through his imagery. Michael wants you to work a bit and spend time in discovery. Weaving fabric-like tapestries, he has remarkable control throughout the multiple layer s of his paintings. Communicating on so many levels asserts his competency as a journeyman. Mike's imagery comes straight at you with relentless persistence. He's a painter. He paints. From an investment perspective, the buying end, I want to know there are more paintings coming, that he's committed to his craft; that painting is the priority. In that I have confidence. Beyond that, he is quite aware of what he is doing:
“Recently my subject matter has become simplified to a combination of iconographic animals and symbols. I assign different roles through the representation of animals as humans, as spiritual idols, and the traditional use as submissive workers. They are depicted with human characteristics and emotions, particularly a passive sadness, for example: a longing pelican in search of companionship. Elephants and rhinos, which normally symbolize strength, are conversely depicted as soft and demure. I also juxtapose animals as idols with other material objects, which may represent deities.”
Brian Smith is an artist of a different ilk. He's honest, not a lot of fanfare. But his work comes at you with a twist, like a DNA helix; color, form, shape and line creating two reciprocal visually encoded strands of perspective. He paints from the inside out presenting opposing natures of similar themes. In its resolution, there is mathematics with universal constants. A resulting familiarity comforts us; we want to continue our exploration. At the extremities, bright opaque color fields reflecting tight interwoven dramas of form and creation are opposed by dark, burdened and dense renderings. Tension.
Symmetry and balance propels Brian's confident imagery. Three distinct sets of paintings visually display his staunch dogma on “order.” With building blocks of ideas, he moves the viewer through an equation. A set of paper works made with graphite and acrylics employ a gentle hand; a blending of mutely painted organic shapes and loose structure. Next on the menu, our appetizers, we have 3 near fluorescent paintings that quickly establish Brian as a frontiersman. He's on a mission; “daring” and fearless. Albeit with gentle and delicate hand that he announces the coming violence. The luminescence of “Pain is to come” is nearly off-putting; embedded silhouette figures offset by intense light. Almost, with a naiveté, he courts us with color. “She Cayman to my life” pits nude female form against a Cayman alligator, almost as a formula, begging the question of our connection and relationship to the nature of the beast. Are we dominant or the dominated, hunter or the hunted?
Like a crescendo Brian creates momentum through the body of the work. His entrées are not for the vegetarian. He is a carnivore. “Stampede,” “Revo Baby,” and “Never touch Baby Birds” are three aggressively painted paintings. Unlike the delicate form of the Fluorescent paintings, truncated torsos haunt this trio. Strewn with limbs, the summation of the whole, caught in the spiraling helix, we are now inside the dark-side; with a dramatic change of paint. Despite the white wash of these paintings, we are in the dark. Well developed and structured, there is lots of underpainting with tons of texture; massive paint drips endemic of his fearlessness.
There is a point of convergence where the works of these two painters cross paths. Looking closely at “Helping hands,” a painting by Walsh, we see conclusively that either of the two painters could have created the piece. Nuance, palette and line, the essence of this painting, are shared by both Brian and Michael alike as they paint across a spectrum of disciplines, visually incorporating light and color with tremendous subtly.