Stephen Plount's Page
Stephen Plount & Friends
Profile Information
- College / University
- Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY
- Program
- MFA Painting and Drawing
- If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?
- Painting
- I am...
- a painter
- About my artwork
- commentary in print or lecture form perhaps provides an instrument that would, "tell the public how the pictures should be looked at and what to look for. While on the surface this may seem an obliging and helpful thing to do, the real result is the paralysis of the mind and the imagination (and for the artist a premature entombment)."
Mark Rothko in a letter to Katherine Kuh, 1954
My current work is made with watercolor, gouache, and/or acrylic on a variety of handmade papers. These intimate studies evolve into moderately sized acrylic and/or oil and beeswax (cold wax) works on canvas, linen, wood, aluminum, etc. I tend to work in modular sequences, developing it as a composer might when using sound. My paintings consist of bright or dull color and grays that change with the ambient light and can grow to wall-sized proportions.
Each work draws on the moment of making, a critical consciousness and an understanding of color codes, resulting in images that exist in a “realm of the possible” where the small, delicate, that which is quiet and seems powerless, silent, represents power—something quietly subversive, a persistent, silent clarity.
My work is minimal, simple, clear, clumsy, stupid, repetitive, rhythmic, disoriented, transformational, allegorical, metaphorical, empty, full, musical, silent, changing, static, deplorable, serious, sad, sweet, dumb, loud, easy, and hard. Painting is hard–it’s an inquiry into space, a silent visual language, rescuing and presenting human-ness beyond word and reason.
Contemplation, meditation, sacrifice, persistence, enable the transformational possibilities of non-objective painting. In my daily painting practice, as the work peers back at me, delicate object/images that are all the same but different, representing our world pushing against arbitrariness, mediocre solutions and lack of awareness I notice this. ‘Sacrifice to attain perfection. Suffer to attain poetry. Slow down to discover beauty’, a James Lee Byars mantra is relevant to my painting and drawing.
The seriousness in my work in most instances might be viewed as somewhat amusing, if not pretentious. But there is an uplifting quality in the work that has its humorous element along with this seemingly naif sincerity of purpose. The question, possibly with every brushstroke, is how does one discover phenomena, mind, beauty—the earth—using the non-discursive language of painting with any success in the 21st Century?
SP
- Artists I like
- Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, Paul Klee, Arshile Gorky, Sean Scully, El Anatsui, Marcus Raetz, Matthew Deleget, James Kennedy, William Carlos Williams, Rainer Rilke, Remko Scha, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Frank Auerbach, Willem DeKooning, Joan Mitchell, Yves Klein, Imi Knoebel, Blinky Palermo, Sol Lewitt, Mel Bochner, Tara Donovon, Stephen Westfall, Bernard Frize, Yun-Fe Ji, Michael Brennan, Ron Gorchov, James Sienna, Thomas Nozkowscki...
Music
Evgeny Kissen, Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler, Johannes Brahms, Bach, The Kronos Quartet, Wolfgang Mozart, Dimitri Shostakovitch, Philip Glass, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Antonio Vivaldi, violin, cello, flute, viola, clarinet, harp, piano, Chamber music, Charles Lloyd, Huguette Dreyfus, Keith Jarrett, Chet Baker,
- Interests
- painting and drawing, color theory, color, nature, human beings, cats, flowers, fog, clouds, skies, art history, paintings, brushes, paint, liquids, rain, grass, trees, waves, beaches, fear, death, sorrow, myth, immaterial things, small and insignificant moments of delicacy and beauty
coffee
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Ok awesome i got your message on email. i did send a message back recently regarding teaching at unis here in the UK etc but i think it may have got lost along the way.
i will be sending a package to you in first week of january which i think you will like.
will send you some moreinfo via email v soon. just to reiterate - your website looks beyond stunning - i'm sure if you wanted you could not only teach at un i on the west coast or in new mexico but also teach private workshops - with a website like that - easy.
talk soon, best frrom luke ::~)
Thanks!
I like your work i´ve seen on your homepage, its very interesting. especialle the drawings.
best greetings
thank you for your comment
i am very happy to discover your work as well, I was moved by the small daily sketches you put on your own site...i fill we share very smiler territory, its very interesting.
Your photograph 'Installation View "Cloudy Day" 2008' is absolutely stunning. Really stunning nothing more.
Would it be possible to hire you to write a short article for me in april/may 2009? I have decided to publish a pilot book of about 30 pages next year.
Our show went off like lightning on friday. I suppose the rain is on it's way? Glad I was born in 1976. Have put up some photos of our show.
Best regards from Lukito
I'm glad to hear you like my art. I really like many of your artworks too. I think you are one of the best on this site. My favorites is - "Rose", "Rain", 8,9...
I sent a message recently regarding a musician named Louis Sclavis. However I thin it migt have got lost in the wind as I gather the lo cal message system failed a couple days ago.
Ok speak soon, best fr l ::~)
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