Reading the insides out, below the betweens
Growth 
On Reflection 
Calm 
Ecstacy 
Confidence 
Fired Up 
Beneath the Surface 
Hope
By Tom Wachunas
“…the layers of a painting challenge us to explore its
depth and seek to understand the mystery — urging the hidden things to come
forward and reveal themselves. What's beneath the layers, in our paintings or
in our lives? What would we find hidden there, if only we could remove all that
obscures it? That mystery is one I enjoy exploring and expressing in my work.” -Tom Delameter
“Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in
space…The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a
subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a
different source, they work from within.
― Jackson Pollock
EXHIBIT: Depth
of Feel - Paintings by Tom Delameter, resident artist at Patina
Arts Centre/ 324 CEVELAND AVENUE NW, downtown Canton, Ohio / THROUGH JUNE 8,
2024 / Current Gallery viewing hours: Thursdays 12 – 8p.m., Saturdays 5 – 9p.m., also
5 – 9p.m. on the last Friday of every month, plus every Canton First Friday 5 –
9p.m.
Palimpsest (noun): a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain; something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface / something such as a work of art that has many levels of meaning, types of style, etc. that build on each other.
On in his website (hyperllnk
posted above), Canton painter Tom Delameter tells us, “I would say I'm a
self-taught artist, but that's not totally accurate. More like life-taught.
Which is okay. My artistic expression began to come out later in life…” In the process, he was attracted to Abstract
Expressionism. I’m sure he was lured by what he calls “…its emphasis on
spontaneous, personal expression over traditional techniques or subject
matter.”
Which is to
say that on one level, the subject matter claimed and embraced by many abstract
expressionist painters, such as the mid-20th century trailblazer,
Jackson Pollock - and many other adherents to his aesthetic - is the process of
making the painting itself. It’s painting about… painting. That process ceased
being a traditional exercise in imitation of natural reality, or illusionism,
becoming instead a discrete performative action. Call it an improvised
confluence of intent, intuition, and chance. The old tyranny of
representational imagery was usurped in favor of articulating a uniquely more
personal energy.
I don’t mean to
imply that Delameter’s brand of abstraction looks a lot like Jackson Pollock’s
sublime messes of drips and poured splatters. Far from it. For starters,
Delameter’s acrylic works in his current series, which he collectively calls Depth
of Feel, are on a scale considerably smaller than Pollock’s commanding enormities.
That said, there’s still a kinship between the two. You could consider them
maybe second or third cousins in terms of how they distribute an “all-over”
variety of gestures and marks that cover the painting surface. That
distribution, however, appears comparatively more structured and rhythmic in
Delameter’s paintings, imbuing many of them with a distinct sense of
verticality.
The scale of his works
is such that they aren’t intimidating environments that overwhelm your physical
field of vision so much as they invite quiet meditation and introspection. They’re
not dizzy dance floors where paint has been flung at high velocity (à la Pollock).
Rather, in all their accumulated layerings and gesticulations of the painter’s
hand, Delameter’s intimate canvases strike me as ornamented symbolic writings
of a kind. Palimpsest metaphors, if you will. These are flows of consciousness,
states of mind or conditions of heart which over time emerged, were altered, and/or
covered up, and/or redefined.
They’re not just
paintings about painting as a performative act. They’re also about you, the
viewer, and your own performative action of looking with intent as well as
intuition. So look closely, look long. Read between the lines. Feel the depth.
