Mannerist Abstraction
I’m drawn to the elongated and stylized forms that characterize Mannerist art, and in 2019 I began to make abstractions of Jacopo Pontormo’s Deposition from the Cross (c. 1525-28) five years before I ever saw it. Pontormo’s palette is like a confection of pastel tints, in contrast with the subject of the Virgin Mary’s reaction to the lowering of Christ’s body from the cross.. I’m fascinated by the he juxtaposition of positive and negative space in the forms of the painting, as well as the decorative arrangement of the figures which recalls late Gothic/pre Renaissance altarpieces.
For Untitled (Blue Pontormo) (2021) the 36 x 48 inch wood panel was covered in a mosaic-like collage of torn pieces of college Blue Books, before a blue ground was added. The imagery uses only line to delineate the forms. To speak her name is to call up pictures of people and places (2021) compresses the imagery from the painting and darkens the palette. When I finally saw Pontormo’s painting for the first time in Florence in 2024, the only surprise was the layout of the chapel in the church.
I explored the imagery in this painting by making dozens of gouaches on vellum and tracing paper trying different color palettes on the same hand drawn shapes. In 2023, sixteen of these 9 x 12 inch gouaches were assembled into a grid to make up the artwork, The World beyond intrudes into the world below (2023), shown between two sheets of 52 x 56 inch plexiglass.
Roaring Springs Series; Untitled (Blue Pontormo abstraction) (2021) 36 x 48 in. Pontormo abstraction in line on blue book collaged ground.
To speak her name is to call up pictures of people and places (Pontormo Abstraction) (2021) Oil on wood panel. 36 x 48 in.
Roaring Springs Series: Myth as Measure (Pontormo Abstraction) (2021) Oil on collaged board. 16 x 20 in. Framed in gray.
The World beyond intrudes into the world below (2023) Gouache on vellum in plexiglass
Pontormo abstraction forms (6, 4 x 6 in. each) Gouache on card stock.
Study: Lamentation Abstraction No. 11 (Pthalo Blue, Naples Yellow, Ultramarine) (2022) Gouache on parchment paper. 9 x 12 in.