Doug Smith, “Fly in My Soup,” encaustic, 36×36 in.

Showing at 15th Street Gallery until March 14, the works of Douglas Smith and John Collins contrast with each other, the former exploring the bounds of abstraction and title while the latter explores—literally—the forests and rockscapes of Utah in figurative displays of changing light. They offer viewers a reprieve from either the literal or the abstract by simply crossing the room.

Smith works in encaustics, a fusing of layers of melting beeswax and pigments, to create textured compositions that require  foresight in planning while allowing the freeform of the process to run loose. Some pieces see the wax smooth and flat like the red and orange swaths of “Engine Number Nine” while in others, like “A Door Closes, A Window Opens,” materiality is fully expressed in elevated texture and layers. Smith reaches to the bounds of the medium, never muddying the process, retaining the vibrancy of his colors and spontaneity of melting textures.

His titles provide essential context for fully appreciating the work, bringing irony, humor, and even a sense of relaxation to the pieces. “Fly in my Soup” features a couple of black squares in a bed of smooth red wax. A horizon line bifurcates “Red in the Morning,” a teal haze rising off the horizon with a glob of red hanging overhead. “Bungalow 1914” has thin, horizontal, tile-looking pieces reminiscent of the classic low-angle, prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright bungalows from the early 1900s.

Doug Smith, “By the Pool at Dusk,” encaustic, 36×36 in.

“By the Pool at Dusk” attracts the eye for its color blocking of serene aquas and chartreuse. As the title suggests, the right-angled, aqua pool set in a lawn of gold places the viewer on a reclined lawn chair as the sun sets and the heat of the summer day subsides. Gray rectangles are angled like poolside chairs seen from a birdseye view and newspaper clippings are collaged under paint washes and wax treatments reading “Reveling in the blur.” There is a peace, a quiet, a stillness to this piece, reveling sanctuary. “Off the Grid” uses an underlying grid to guide its form. Yet the topmost black rectangles are offset from said grid, displaced and taking up their own space independent of their allotted placements – like we humans, beyond the bounds of the boxes we are put in by social expectations.

Considering the encaustic process is so old, it is especially interesting to see “Horsehair Study,” where Smith creates a similar effect to the use of horsehair in traditional Native American pottery. For the ancient ceramic process, the potter throws strands of horsehair onto a piece of pottery that has been pulled from the firing process, at around 1600 degrees, leaving a carbonized impression of the hair on the surface of the pottery. In his painting, Smith uses horsehair attached to the piece via the melted wax amongst the black and white striped background, a nod to the ancient tradition of this land.

Doug Smith, “Horsehair Study,” encuastic, 36×36 in.

 

John Colllins, “Stippled Desert,” acrylic, 48×60 in.

While Smith employs abstraction and uses title to imbue his pieces with meaning, John Collins’ work is much more figurative, more certain of interpretation. His works use an impressionistic lens through which to study light and its changing hues, especially during the golden hour, seemingly Collins’ favorite time of day.

That light transforms the vermillion cliffs of southern Utah’s desertscapes. Instead of oranges and reds, we see pinks of neon and purples of lavender and eggplant expressing the setting sun beyond our view of the canvas. In “Stippled Desert” bright fuchsia and periwinkle delineate the contours of the canyon dropping below the horizon, putting us in a field of sagebrush at dusk. The sky makes up the majority of the composition, a gradient wash overlaid by stippled nuances of changing light from horizon to darkening sky. In “Fall Hike – Zion Canyon” we are submerged in a canyon, looking up at what we know are orange and red cliffs of Wingate Sandstone, yet Collins’ pink and purples radiate off the cliffs, indicating the setting of the sun, time ticking away until it’s completely dark and the cliffs are merely shadows before us. It is like Monet’s light studies of the haystacks, where the lighting is changing within seconds and this is a snapshot of a fleeting moment.

John Collins, “Fall Hike-Zions Canyon,” oil, 24×20 in.

Collins gives just as much attention to the scenes and changing light of northern Utah. A similar shrinking light enlivens “Aspens with a shot of light,” where the last remaining salmon pink light peeks through a dense aspen grove. The shade creeps up the eyed bark of the aspens, lavender and blues highlighting the foreground as the pink draws our eyes up and back through the forest. He plays with a different form of changing light in “Guardsmans Pass,” using a dark slate gray against bright marigold yellows and oranges to indicate the oncoming of an ominous fall rain storm. The shift in season is upon us, a chill in the air setting in, the colors of the trees changing by the day. Fall also draws the artists’ great attention for the vibrancy and ever-shifting nature of the flora. “Aspens in the Peak of Fall” takes the viewer into a birds’ eye view above the trees looking down at the shifting variations of color up the side of a mountain—the lower oaks and maples a bright red while the higher aspens are a golden yellow, all expressed with loose, gestural brushwork.

These two artists’ works complement each other, offering viewers an exploration of both the literal and the abstract. Of what can be conveyed by a slight shift in color to indicate the shifting, fleeting time of day and of what color blocking and layered textures can say about the simple pleasures of life. Although wholly different in subject matter and medium, both Douglas Smith and John Collins can shift the viewers perspective of what is right in front of them.

Douglas Smith and John Collins, 15th Street Gallery, Salt Lake City, through March 15.

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.