Deep See Risings

 

Deep See Risings 

Living in the Past

Behind the Veil

Unmasked

Transference

Portrait of a Dream

Waiting

Metamorphosis

By Tom Wachunas

“Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding. It puts you in a state of reverberation.”  - Philip Guston

“Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.”  - Chuck Close

“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.”  - Jackson Pollock

“Painting is by nature a luminous language.”  - Robert Delaunay

EXHIBIT: SUBCONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION – Paintings and ink drawings by Christopher Duncan / at The Little Art Gallery - located in the North Canton Public Library, 185 North Main Street, North Canton, OH / through August 31, 2024 / Viewing hours are Mon.-Thurs. 10am to 8pm, Fri. 10am to 6pm, Sat. 10am to 4pm, Sun. 1pm to 5pm

https://studioduncan.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEUgSdleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVq6GX4gY9fNulffF0xzA6_reVBTtYyqonplrKvClbeA2eidNxPDj-aU6g_aem_h6pxk3HZdKeqA0bkr-V  

 

alchemy (noun) / 1.   a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of physical materials /  2.  a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way / 3. an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting .

[please note: while this exhibit includes several  arresting pen and ink drawings, my focus in this post is on the artist’s paintings]

   And here’s a wondrous alchemy from Beloit, Ohio - the abracadabrisms of Christopher Duncan. He turns canvases coated with acrylic paint into compelling eureka meditations. More than just exquisite abstract images executed with mesmerizing panache, his uniquely spectacular paintings are metaphysical portals into supernatural realizations.

   In his artist statement for this exhibit, Duncan has written that those realizations have sprung from his navigating the abundance of images that flow through his mind “…like a raging river.”  In navigating that raging river, he engages “…the act of remembering while swimming against the current of conscious thought.”  In doing so, he tells us that his paintings “… render their own realities. They are worlds in and of themselves. They are self contained microcosms which openly defy the drone of collective thought and run wild through the fields of possibility.”

     In these INTUITive close encounters of the subconscious kind -  into-ITnesses, if you will –  there is often a surreal propinquity of cerebral thresholds in constant motion and flux, straddling and sauntering through liquid, folded boundaries between empirical facts and mystical secrets, between the mundane and the spiritual. Transportive and transfixing traces of seemingly familiar phenomena are layered, entwined, and otherwise swirled into both earthbound and cosmic dimensionalities. Contractions and expansions. Blossomings and metamorphoses. Here’s the changeable weather, the stunning chromatic acrobatics, and the diaphanous luminosity of profound contemplations.

    Contemplations of what, exactly? The ineffable beauty of these paintings – their soulfulness  - is all the more meaningful when we look at them in light of Duncan’s own words: “Like everyone, I have struggles. But I find meaning and purpose in every aspect of creating. One footstep followed by the next… It is a continuum – a work in the hands of one greater than me…”

   Think perhaps of that one greater than the artist as the ultimate inspiration, the perfect alchemist, the hand of a super-collaborator. And what greater collaborator is there than the Creator of creativity itself?  From his so-called subconscious, the artist rises step- by -step  to an invigorated and edified consciousness of sensual ethereality.

   With that in mind, look into these paintings, these continuums, and be…blessed.