Art / Elliott Green

:: Three Works ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

I began mak­ing paint­ings rem­i­nis­cent of land­scapes in 2012, and since then have giv­en a lot of thought to how this tra­di­tion­al dis­ci­pline could be reimag­ined and revitalized. 

I felt there was room for inno­va­tion in the mid­way between what the cam­era sees and the soft fleet­ing images the mind makes to abbre­vi­ate memories. 

My basic approach has been to divide the land­scape into flex­i­ble zones of var­i­ous­ly paint­ed abstrac­tions, and then uni­fy them to share a com­mon place. The con­nec­tions between these areas are impor­tant to me: if done well, two dis­sim­i­lar adjoin­ing ter­ri­to­ries can melt into each oth­er, or exist nat­u­ral­ly side by side, and the tran­si­tion can appear as seam­less as mov­ing from scene to scene in a dream. 

Each of these niche places with­in places can be char­ac­ter­ized, using ges­ture, vis­cos­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and col­or, to embody thought, emo­tion, moti­va­tion, and metaphor. If these ele­ments can blend to har­mo­nize, then they can rise up togeth­er to pro­vide a more expan­sive view­point and a whiff of a glimpse of coher­ent infin­i­ty, which ide­al­ly touch­es one with a fuller feel­ing of being a part of the world and beyond. 

Using a range of paints, tools, and move­ments, as well as states of mind, I have been able to ren­der and enter imag­i­nary places, flow­ing along with impro­vi­sa­tion­al forces. I some­times make deci­sions faster than I can think. Curios­i­ty and intu­ition have pro­pelled me to find for­ma­tions and ener­gies, like the lumi­nes­cent vibra­tions that appear in Uncoil­ing Light, which I accept to be true to some aspect of nature, even if I don’t ful­ly under­stand it yet. 

Elliott Green was born in Detroit, Michi­gan, in 1960. He moved to New York City in 1981 and lived there for twen­ty-four years. In 2005 he moved to Athens, New York, a small town sit­u­at­ed between the Catskill Moun­tains and the Hud­son Riv­er, where he con­tin­ues to work and live. He has received a John Simon Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, two Pol­lock-Kras­ner Foun­da­tion Grants, the Rome Prize, and three prizes and awards from the Acad­e­my of Arts and Let­ters, along with numer­ous res­i­den­cy grants. A book of his paint­ings, Elliott Green: At the Far Edge of the Known World, with essays by six writ­ers, was pub­lished by Piero­gi Gallery NYC in late 2019.