Exhibition Spotlight: Salt Lake City
More Than Meets The Eye
The Gestalt of Jeff Pugh
by Ehren Clark | photos by Simon Blundell
Although landscape may be the signature subject for Utah painters, there are as many approaches to painting the land as there are painters who paint it. Many of these approaches derive from straightforward methodology, revealing nothing more than the rocks and the hills and the sky being painted. And then there are other approaches that defy traditional definitions and do something different, attempt something new.
The key words do, and attempt are optimal in a description of the work of painter Jeff Pugh, whose work does more than is expected of traditional landscape and whose work attempts to accomplish something more than a conventional landscape might suggest. Pugh’s landscapes are ambitious, they are successful, and they are true in their accomplishment of so much, within the space of so little — the work of gestalt, an attainment of much more than the totality of the composite parts of a whole might suggest.
Pugh’s works are noted for their jarring and irregular linear quality. Anything but the smooth and crisp quality of traditional painting, Pugh’s works are carved out with his palette knife in a distinctive and characteristic manner. “There is a certain imperfection that occurs when the viewer can put back together fragments of paint that are nothing but square dabs of a particular flesh tone that is nothing more than a value, a smudge of paint,” says Pugh about his the effect of his technique, “but the person ends up seeing this as a finished piece.” Pugh recognizes that his work has a high level of abstraction, so he stops short when it is suggested that he is also a Realist.
Yes, Pugh paints landscapes that construct or delineate, invent or articulate, but regardless of Pugh’s professed methodologies of abstraction, he works on the level of a Realist, responsive to the reality of his subject as art and not illusion. Pugh is under no delusion that the tree with the angular outline broken up into fragments by linear areas of differentiated light and dark is an illusion of what one might see along the pond at Liberty Park. No. Pugh is acknowledging the truth in the tree that is irregular and is heavily shadowed, although Pugh uses this substance as structure and like parts to the whole, makes a play of the shape, the line, the contrasts, and the geometrical shapes created within the tree when light is broken by darkness.
The acknowledgement of Realism in the academic sense of the word is the first step to the consciousness of significance in the measure of gestalt in Pugh’s work. Gestalt is the ultimate designator of meaning and context to all of Pugh’s efforts and the identification of Realism in a shadow of a bush that has no gradation, that is pure shape, that is starchy and irregular, a shadow that is about principles of design more than it is about the shadow of a bush, this Realism is the first step towards realization and recognition of the fuller measure of what Pugh’s works amount to be.
In Pugh’s “Farm Houses,” the two barns are flat planes of crimson red with no intimation of depth between them. Each has a blue-gray tin roof, which in academic analytical formalism distinguishes its recession by difference in tonality between planes, which otherwise juxtaposed will appear flat. The horizon line is resolutely flat, supporting trees that nestle the barns. The sharp precision here between light and shadow with many spaces of both creating distinguishable squared shapes is much in the manner of Maynard Dixon, a Modernist. Very much like Dixon are Pugh’s sloping hills beyond the barns. Dixon painted planes of shape with differentiated hue and tone. He created, for example, foreshortening, but would use segments rather than shading for depth. This is exactly what Pugh is doing with the hills: we see four distinctive ribbons of color alternating between violet-blue and sable brown. The mind understands the blue as recession but the eye sees a flat hillside broken up into shapes of structure. This is a Realist approach to a subject and the use of form in that context.
According to Pugh, when asked about the responsiveness between artist, viewer, and art, he states that, “If you are interested in a photo I am doing, you might as well just look at the photo, but if you want to know how I’m feeling about the subject in the photo, then you are going to have to look at the painting.” According to Pugh, his work is a reflection on himself and how he is feeling at the time of execution. Thus the abstraction that is so much a part of Pugh’s work is the kind that is infused with a personal subjectivity, detected in his very approach to painting. More than any source of meaning in the art of today is the expression of the subjective.
Pugh states unabashedly, “I am a huge proponent that there is God in everything. This includes the division of thirds; the golden mean, in the landscape, in a face, everything about anybody is divided into the golden ratio. Applying that same idea, that principle into my paintings, I think it goes beyond logic into a religious belief, of what I do and what I do with it. There is a reason that I pick the structures that I do.” Further and of even more interest, “If you start looking at these paintings, the root of something like a barn, can be representational of human life, it can be representational of structures of safety, it can be a representation of hard work, or any number of things.”
Here, we find that the basis for Pugh’s composition and every compositional element within the composition is something sacred to this artist. Further, the elements he uses attribute further meanings, all being truth to Pugh, and all having a universal significance. Pugh has synthesized perfectly the formal reality of the very substance of his work with his most deep-seeded core beliefs. Even more current today than the merely subjective is when the subjective synthesizes so seamlessly with the form, with a new emphasis on form, and this is exactly what Pugh is achieving as “the totality of the composite parts of a whole might suggest” becomes so much more.
Consider “Fine Dining,” a formally tight painting that is activated by meaning personal to the artist. At the flat horizon line one third down, is the base of a barn, again a flat plane, a brick red. Around the barn are full trees, though sparse in number. These are painted with bold vertical smears of the knife lending a jarring linearity to the crispness of the composition. The main feature of the painting and truest to the heart of Pugh are the centrifugal presence of five cows. Cows? Yes, cows. Pugh, the ever-expressive symbolist, would not typically use his family as a subject in one of his now famously iconic abstracted scenes, so instead, he paints a cluster of five cows, two larger and three (the number of Pugh’s children) smaller. But there is nothing derisive about this symbol. The cow ubiquitously is a beloved animal, a provider of many things, a nurturer to its young, and a deeply spiritual creature in some Hindu cultures.
Pugh is nothing if not a provider, a nurturer, and a deeply spiritual and stalwart individual who is on his own path of truth. “My works are all representations of some aspect of my life,” he says, “whether it’s a stormy painting or one with billowing clouds, I know ‘a storm’ is coming. Yet we’re all huddled working together. They all have a context to why they are painted as they are.” In this sense Pugh’s works succeed magnificently on this level as gestalt for what they appear to be formally and for so much more that remains open to the viewer’s exploration and for Pugh’s enjoyment as an artist to work experimentally and experientially for his sake, for our sake, for art’s sake.
An exhibition of recent paintings by Jeff Pugh opens at David Ericson Fine Art on Friday, November 15, from 6-9 pm and continues through December 15. More of his art can be seen at http://jpughart.blogspot.com.
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Artist Profile: Salt Lake City
The Art of Illustration
Inside the Studio with Isaac Hastings
by Anne Cummings
The word illustration is derived from the Latin word illustrare meaning, to enlighten. Fitting etymology to consider after meeting Salt Lake City-based illustrator, Isaac Hastings—an enlightened artist with a succinct vision and artistic philosophy. Hastings draws hands in a way that bequeaths a certain grace to his characters, many of which are entirely madcap creations spawned from the never-ending depths of his imagination—an imagination that appears to be in high demand. Hastings explores various hand gestures within much of his work and ponders that “hands are essentially the ultimate tool we have and our hands open up a realm of possibility and options for creativity.” The graceful positioning of hands that can be seen in many of Hastings’ illustrious characters lends an entirely human dimension—perhaps Hastings’ own sense of humanity to his often un-human characters and to much of his work in general. Ralph Waldo Emerson once mused, “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine,” a sentiment that suggests that creations from the inner depths of experience and feeling are essentially superior in how they tap into the psyche, opening a world of expression and self-narrative that reveals much about the artist.
Hastings moved from the Guthrie Studios in downtown Salt Lake City to Poor Yorick Studios four years ago, and works out of a small but charming space. Primarily self-taught, Hastings reflects back to when he began to pursue art in a serious capacity at the age of seventeen. “I thought that in order to be a true artist I needed to be a painter and I tried for a very long time to be a painter before coming to the realization that I just wasn’t—my medium had always been a pencil and paper.” Shortly after this epiphany, Hastings admitted to himself that his niche was illustration and he came to embrace that reality and immersed himself into the world of illustration and networking locally to cultivate business, while learning all he could about his field and defining his distinctive style.
Hastings grew up quite literally in a wood shop, which to this day allows him access to an abundance of unique wood. His family owns Wood Revival Desk Company, a local business that produces handcrafted furniture. Everyone in his family has worked for the business at one point or another. Hastings talks about being introduced to the loveliness of wood and recalls, “My dad is the one who introduced me to the intricate beauty of wood and the natural symmetry that occurs within the grain when wood has been split and bookmatched.” This term bookmatched, refers to the process that involves sawing one wooden board in half, through the center, which allows the two pieces to be opened like a book, revealing two almost mirror image pieces of wood which Hastings then connects, lining up the grain and knots to create a symmetrical design. Hastings has taken this idea and developed an ongoing series cleverly entitled Knot Art, the original concept for which was passed along to him by his father, Charlie Hastings. The series resembles the psychological inkblots associated with the Rorschach test, opening up wide variations of interpretation as to what is seen by the viewer. “Every piece of wood that is split has a one of a kind design, so to find a unique piece of wood with the right kind of knots and grains allows me to create designs that resemble faces and animals.” Hastings is currently working on a collaborative project and inviting other artists to create their interpretive paintings and drawings based on what organic life they perceive within the various Knot Art works.
As an independently working illustrator, Hastings’ projects change week to week. He talks about his commissioned work, ranging from album cover design, illustrations for festivals and publications (he’s currently working on the December cover for SLUG Magazine), to custom tattoo designs. Often he will receive an email from someone who is looking for a custom tattoo design and has seen his work online. Hastings will create renderings and after the client has selected their favorite he will produce a tattoo line work stencil that the tattoo artist then uses to transfer to the skin. “I’m so anxious about the permanence of tattoos,” says Hastings. “I could never be a tattoo artist, but I have so much respect for the artists I know and the amazing work they do.” Clearly, Hastings is building a solid portfolio, which is clear from the impressive range and versatility of projects on his website, which incidentally, he designed and built himself. “I have an obsession with learning things,” he says. “Basically my life is about trying to get that warm fuzzy feeling which manifests when I feel like I’ve discovered something new and satisfied that desire for knowing as much as I possibly can.”
Hastings is fully committed, he works hard, really hard. A reminder to his work ethic is written on the floor of his studio: less talk, more work. Regardless of what commercial projects he is occupied with he commits to spending two hours a day drawing, with the goal of completing one illustration a day. “I see the most artistic progression within this specific goal setting and after ten days of doing something for two hours a day, I gather incredible momentum and am flooded with new ideas.” This flood of new ideas often manifests into what Hasting refers to as “passion projects,” those concepts and ideas that he creates for himself, driven by a desire to artistically project his responses to a constantly capricious visual world.
Hastings has some exciting things on the horizon. Check out his website at www.ihsquared.com to stay tuned to his happenings. This guy is going places.
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