Scintillating Sixth Sense Sojourns

 

 Scintillating Sixth Sense Sojourns 

80s Track Suit

Olives and Company

Aerial View 2 (top)/ Aerial View 1

Road Signs

Oh My

Lessons of Fatherhood 1-4

Refraction 2 (top) / Refraction 1

By Tom Wachunas 

“I make no distinction between poetry and painting.”  - Joan Miró

   EXHIBIT: Departures / recent paintings by Christopher Triner / at John Strauss Studios Gallery, 236 Walnut Ave NE, Canton, OH / Gallery hours: M – F 10a.m. to 5p.m.  THROUGH OCTOBER 13, 2023 / Artist Reception on Friday, Oct. 6, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

https://john-strauss-furniture.myshopify.com/collections/christopher-triner

   Prior to seeing this exhibit, my last encounter with the work of prolific painter Christopher Triner was his solo show called “Detours,” at Cyrus Art Gallery one year ago. Here’s what he wrote then about his exquisite landscapes and arboreal scenes: "We have all found ourselves looking for “detours” during the last two and a half years. Ways to pass time; ways to stay safe; ways to calm our own anxieties; and maybe even ways to escape. My detours found me traveling near and far to appreciate simplicity, solitude, and a bit more of myself."  He focused on representing nature as a beautiful, comforting refuge, rendered with a luscious palette, and pulsing with a luminous serenity.

   Here’s a link to my post about that show, in case you’re interested:

   http://artwach.blogspot.com/2022/08/roads-into-arboreal-auras.html

   Switch gears now, and fast-forward to more recent work featured in Triner’s current solo exhibit titled Departures. Here’s some of what he has written about these very distinctive abstractions: “…I see my work as still a type of topography or map-making of landscapes, but now, I cannot visually see the trails, the paths, and the light sources from images; only in the arbitrary occurrences that happen on the painting surfaces…”

   Departures, then? In the particular style of imagery, certainly. Yet Triner’s newer paintbrush trawlings are nonetheless tantalizing arrivals in their own right. They’re intimate, contemplative visits to…elsewhere. Sensing the seine, pith, and marrow of these abstractions is to enter a psychogenic ‘place’ – Triner’s as well as your own. So, how sharp is your sixth sense these days? To get into it, you’ll need to intuit. 

  Triner’s paintings are kinetic, performative actions. They’re not static, objectively illustrated geophysical scenes, but rather energetically encrypted expressions of a state of mind and heart. Call it a meditative choreography of moods and memories filtered, unraveled, and reconfigured as if to the beat of the painter’s brush hearing music.

   To be complete, all they need now are willing partners. Care to listen and dance along, anyone?