Gerri Rachins
MFA ’01 Fine Arts 2D
My paintings, drawings, and collages evoke the complicated zeitgeist of our time, suggesting more questions than answers. They reveal a preoccupation with the field of physics, with its focus on themes of matter and energy, physical properties, and the phenomena of perception.Ā
Regarding the Red Herring collages, A āred herringā is a diversion intended to distract attention from the real issue. It may be an irrelevant comment or topic presented in a discussion, or an argument to intentionally sidetrack the participants into going after the āred herringā, thereby forgetting the topic of their initial discussion. The art world and the political world provide especially fertile ground for cultivating an abundance of āred herrings.ā I think of my collages as visual metaphors for situations that I have experienced where āred herringsā were successfully used.
In the Almost Everything is Going Well paintings, the title implies that some things are not going well. In the series, boundaries overlap, negate, reinforce, and intersect, resulting in an image that concedes to the coexistence of conflicting elements. Here, an imposed isolation provided more time for exploration and discovery in my studio.Ā With assistance from gravity, I use my hands holding the edges of the paper to move colorful, fluid acrylic ink around the paper. From the palimpsest of inky lines, inherent shapes are excavated, establishing an initial structure to explore. I selected the titles for each painting from my ongoing compilation of excerpts from the weekly Science section of The New York Times.
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