TRACES: FRANK PHILLIPS & CAMERON RITCHER

CAMERON RITCHER -

STATEMENT \ VERNACULAR SERIES

I am interested in how humanity, as a whole, has attempted to make sense of our reality, and how I, as an individual, have done the same. We grasp for meaning - what do a culture’s languages, religions, economies, and forms of play reveal about it?

The grid format originated as a reference catalog of thumbnail sketches drawn on a piece of scrap wood. Not thought of as a finished piece, this was initially a way for me to document the shapes and symbols I use - a personal alphabet. I noticed that I enjoy the simplicity and comfort of the grid and how it allows me to focus on color and shape. Some of these shapes reference ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, religious symbolism, or modern advertising. The origin of others is unclear. 

This work, to me, feels earthy, agricultural, even rudimentary, yet simultaneously cosmic - intelligent in a way that feels beyond me. That’s what I’m after here - the sense that I’ve made something unknowable yet still elementary, crude in a way that transcends the sum of its own parts. The substance of this work is not in the shapes or the colors but in what happens between them. 

FRANK PHILLIPS

STATEMENT

The work for this show is part of my ongoing interest in the activity of practice… in arranging (or re-arranging) color and line within a formalist context.

A painting starts with marks on paper or canvas… a framework of lines… I have no sense of the potential or end result, nor do I care, I’m simply trying to get into the vastness of the space. 

When the structure is defined with its flattened compartments, I fill it with color to better organize the composition. From here, I wait… I evaluate… I respond to the already recorded action. 

I re-define passages, carve away color, and stack new shapes on top of old.

It’s a form of playing chess against yourself: move a piece, and then consider an appropriate response from a critical point of view. Scribe an edge, or overhaul the whole thing… I go back and forth like this, seemingly second-guessing myself all the while.

These decisions leave traces of its history… bad ideas and good… and are all a parts-to-whole design of the process and struggle.