Fresh Pictorial Spaces: Michael Frank Blair at Conduit Gallery

Sherry Cheng·
ArtDallas/Ft Worth
·

Michael Blair is trying to get to a place where everything is open and possible. Over the last decade, he has been on a quest to create a fresh, new kind of pictorial space. From playing with the simplest building blocks of a picture, to experimenting with a growing vocabulary of mark-making and color choices, Blair’s explorations in abstraction have yielded a strong body of work that reveals an abundance of thought.

This summer (June 24-Aug.12), Conduit Gallery in Dallas presents Michael Frank Blair, a solo exhibition that will include Blair’s works from 2011 to the present, tracing the artist’s preoccupations as he questions the illusionistic nature of pictures, reframing facts and fiction on a two-dimensional surface.

The earliest works are in a square format. “I was trying to find ground zero,” says Blair. “These were an attempt to avoid any reference to either landscape or portraiture.” His later experiments with more vertical orientations stretch up and feel almost like objects in themselves. “Rather than just a window to look through,” continues Blair, “the kinds of space they hold are totally different, more related to the digital spaces created and consumed on smartphones and iPads and whatnot.”

Blair’s process is largely intuitive and sometimes chaotic. He starts a painting by creating a problem to solve. “Usually the first thing I do is not important,” explains Blair. “I get some energy going and get marks down, getting something on the canvas to start thinking. I try to create a problem for myself to get out of whatever comfort zone I’m in, something I have to deal with and solve compositionally.” An early example is a minimal painting that’s almost all white. It began with a wild scribble in black marker that runs into the side of the canvas. “I did lots of little things around it to make it work somehow. It’s one of the first paintings I made that felt complete and resolved without having the surface covered in paint.”

Similarly, Blair’s color palette also stems from creating and solving a problem. “I try to create color combinations that I haven’t used before or seen,” says Blair. “Sometimes I make them clash, using colors that are really close but jar.” He will put unconventional color combinations together just to see what they do and then respond to it and try to make them work.

This kind of improvisatory play involved in the action of painting reflects Blair’s fascination with children’s art. “I’ve always been interested in children’s art, the kind of really expressive scribbling, almost primitive thing.” He would take his own children’s art into the studio and categorize them into stacks of different types of drawings. “I would just soak them in and think about them. I’m trying to get to this place of unencumbered play, serious play. That’s what I like about children’s art-making mindset. It’s play but it’s totally serious, like play is their job.”

The fluid spontaneity that characterizes Abstract Expressionism is a hallmark of Blair’s paintings. California artist Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series was an early inspiration for Blair. Applying multiple thin layers of paint, Diebenkorn would spend long hours experimenting with his color palette and exploring ideas of light and structure, searching for his next move. “I do a lot of looking,” says Blair. “Then maybe there’s just one little thing that happens and it feels like it’s generating electricity, or some kind of visual magic forces through.”

Blair usually starts with oil paint, then throws in pencil, pen, marker, and occasionally lipstick that’s lying nearby. He might even glue something to the canvas, or use a screwdriver to draw back into the paint, then rebuild the canvas again. “I’m looking for something magical to happen and I don’t know what it is until I see it,” says Blair. In one painting, four long tracks run through a streak of bright yellow paint. These were made by scraping a palette knife into the wet paint. “This is like drawing by subtraction,” explains Blair. “I sometimes use thinner or wider tools to scrape back into the paint. It’s a way to add linear elements without adding more paint.”

The two most recent paintings in the show demonstrate a marked change in the artist’s treatment of space. Overlapping marks and shapes have evolved into a more gridded shallow space, allowing the differences in color, texture, and gestural speed to take on more importance.

Blair’s works continue to ask fundamental questions about two-dimensionality and the nature of pictorial space, even as that notion itself is changing with the proliferation of new media technologies. “I feel like I’m tracing the evolution of pictorial spaces from textiles to maps to cave walls to emojis,” considers Blair. “I try to get a really rich amount of thinking and action recorded into the paintings. I don’t know what it says specifically but it marks my presence doing this action and thinking these thoughts and solving these problems.”

—SHERRY CHENG

Sherry Cheng

Sherry Cheng is a music educator, free-lance pianist, and artistic director of the HCC Chamber Music Series.