Toward a Romantic Minimalism

Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling. - Baudelaire

Sutra, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, © 2010 Diane McGregor

As I've developed my work over the past couple of years, going from very smoothly blended and luminous imagery to more textured, painterly surfaces and a focus on the underlying structure of the grid, I have sought to clarify exactly what kind of "ism" my work might fall into. My current paintings are minimalist in concept (the grid, repetition, non-objective), yet quite painterly and romantic in execution. Romanticism in visual art emphasized the new prominence of the brushstroke and impasto, the artist's free handling of paint, expressiveness of mood and color, intuition and emotion. Lyrical or painterly abstraction was introduced as a response to minimal art and the rigorous formalism of Judd -- the artist's touch is always visible in this type of painting. In 1967, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia curated a show entitled, "A Romantic Minimalism," which included work by Brice Marden, Carl Andre, and Ralph Humphrey. These decidedly "minimalist" artists never abandoned the surface quality of the object. Brice Marden discusses this in a wonderful interview in Tate Etc (see https://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue14/ofmind.htm, especially Marden's discussion of Rothko's work). Minimalism was a reaction against the painterly focus of Abstract Expressionism, but some of the "minimalist" artists working in the 60s and 70s never abandoned the presence of the artist's touch.

So I have been thinking of my work in terms of Romantic Minimalism - I use the grid, repetition, a limited palette, and no specific references to nature. However, the painting seduces with it's complex woven textures and mysterious layers of color, and I am thoroughly engaged by the gesture and quality of the individual brushstroke and its emotive and contemplative content.

Wisdom

Jaya II, oil on canvas, 15 x 12 inches, © 2010 Diane McGregor

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. -- Marcel Proust

With each painting I create, I come closer to a subconscious Ideal. Yet, this is a fleeting gesture -- I no sooner finish a painting than I want to move on, forward, in my yearning for the Ideal. No one can help us through it, or to it; it must be discovered for ourselves and by ourselves.

Transformation

Rajin, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, © 2010 Diane McGregor

"The simple aesthetic requirement by which art should picture the inexpressible developed into a highly complex and comprehensive repertory of artistic principles and technical rules. One of the most significant sources for Southern Song poetry criticism, Yan Yu (1180-1235), defined the poetic as follows:

poetry excels by its transparent luminosity.... It is like echo in the air, color in form, the moon reflected in water, or an image in a mirror; words have limits, but the meaning is inexhaustible.

A painting that matches this goal does not simply illustrate poems by means of narrative motifs easy to recognize; rather, by its subject matter, composition, and ink technique, it carries an expressive charge beyond its forms so that one can recognize moods and an emotional atmosphere that are of a sympathetic nature as in a poem."

Above quote taken from Dreaming the Southern Song Landscape by Valerie Malenfer Ortiz, page 65 (Brill, 1999).

Awakening

Bodhana, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, © 2010 Diane McGregor

All landscapes have a history, much the same as people exist within cultures, even tribes. There are distinct voices, languages that belong to particular areas. There are voices inside rocks, shallow washes, shifting skies; they are not silent. And there is movement, not always the violent motion of earthquakes associated with the earth's motion or the steady unseen swirl through the heavens, but other motion, subtle, unseen, like breathing. A motion, a sound, that if you allow your own inner workings to stop long enough, moves into the place inside you that mirrors a similar landscape; you too can see it, feel it, hear it, know it.

-- Joy Harjo, from Secrets from the Center of the World

The Meditative Surface

"A painting with a meditative surface turns in on itself..."
-- Carter Ratcliff

Bandhu, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, © 2010 Diane McGregor

Through the language of repetition and the grid, my work explores the physical presence of oil paint from a minimalist perspective. Formlessness rises within the grid -- there are no lines, no edges, no allusions. Gesture and brushstroke arise as agents of introspection and quiet contemplation. Artifacts of composition are carefully considered, and are either retained or released in service to the harmony of the whole. Within a matrix of layered brushstrokes, the weights of color and texture, light and dark, are delicately balanced and intuitively measured. The lush, deliberate surfaces of these paintings convey both a meditative stillness and an energy force of controlled chaos.