Jacqueline Ehlis

Vigor, Savage Art Resources, Portland, Oregon, July 2005

These abstract painting take on the values of space and assert themselves as architecture reconfiguring space.  I’m interested in taking on the idea of what makes a painting work.  Historically, a painting is the dialectic between the view and the thing, the painting and the ground.

This work addresses the rendering of illusionary space verse the physical object in space, the nature of a painting’s space and the painting’s function in the world.  The physical flatness of the paint surface defines the interior shapes, which allows the beholder to see these elements as being on one plane- the canvas surface.  Asserting the physicality of the work by not disguising its materially permits the beholder to have an experiential relationship with the surface support and affirms the work’s objectness.  Painting can process all the ways that things could be in the world.

I use abstraction to achieve a visual democracy, where you can really make choices about what you’re looking at: “Is this the part that you can put your hand through or is it the part that you grab?”  I’m not interested in the beholder having a passive experience.  My paintings have become more active and stimulating objects.  The meeting of the objects and the beholder has an effect, thereby changing the world.  Most things don’t happen fast enough for me.