RICHARD PRATT paintings by Richard Pratt

RICHARD PRATT paintings

RICHARD PRATT studio

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Published by

RICHARD PRATT studio Knoxville, TN USA printed in Amsterdam

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On the Cover: A Rake’s Progress: The Heir Detail acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010 -2011

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Contents.

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Contents Introduction Transitions No Two Years: The Four Seasons Richard Pratt paints a painting Disruption: Winter into Spring Heads Up: Seasons at Our Feet Homage A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress Richard Pratt paints a series Feeling Vines Abstract Street Trees Aloft The Last Word

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Introduction.

A painting is sometimes worth a thousand missing words, especially for someone like myself who is a painter but not necessarily a writer. A painter has a natural aversion to having his work reduced to a definitive paragraph or two, and yet he relies on words to speak about it and to listen to a viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reactions. Words take their time traveling from page to page, from ear to ear, but paintings can be comprehended immediately. Even though a viewer might return time and again to a favorite painting and discover something new to her, the painting does not change in time, she does. It is through these often uniquely personal reactions that a painting finds a continued life beyond the studio. The images in this book may offer the reader a similar opportunity and encourage a closer look at the paintings themselves. The words in this book are offered as a rumination on painting in general and on my work in particular. In the longer essays an attempt has been made to reveal an artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s process and to provide a glimpse into his mind and studio. The shorter pieces are intended as flashes of insight into specific paintings. A painter reacts to his own work as much as anyone else does and continues to do so long after he actively disengages himself from the process of making a specific painting. The memory of his original intentions is often buried beneath his continued reactions to a painting. The words grow and grow around the work, viewers come and go, but the paintings will forever remain the same, waiting patiently to be seen again and again.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

The Nomad Series Nomad I | Nomad II | Nomad III acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches each 2009

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Transitions. We mark the passage of time, our lives, by contemplating the seasons, while artists’ and poets’ works pertaining to the seasons have guided us through long centuries. The question becomes, “How does one paint spring, summer, fall, and winter this time around?” In No Two Years the leaves of one year’s seasons are caught by the wind, constantly change, and are gradually effaced by time.

“There is a bit of every season in each season.” Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 1974

No Two Years: The Four Seasons acrylic on four canvas panels 48 x 192 inches overall 2011/2012

RICHARD PRATT paintings

No Two Years: Winter acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2011/2012

RICHARD PRATT paintings

No Two Years: Spring acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2011/2012

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No Two Years: Summer acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2011/2012

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No Two Years: Autumn

acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2011/2012

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Richard Pratt paints a painting.

For months I thought about painting the foliage of trees: leaves that would float and overlap each other on the canvas but reveal little of the structure of the branches beneath them. This idea came from a casual, daily observation of the woods behind my studio where scrims of small leaves sailed before curtains of larger ones, and the leaves of tiny saplings waved in the air beneath.

A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress I & IV, 2011

My plan was to limit myself to a simple vocabulary of leaf shapes cut from stiff paper. I had done this for a different effect during the previous year in A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress, a series of eight paintings in which the repetition of standardized shapes had given structure to otherwise random patterns. As always, ideas for future paintings gestated while working on the current one, but at that time I had no picture for my future painting, no mental image to get me started.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

I completed the Rake series barely in time for a show in Atlanta and left for Italy a few weeks later. Travel is not a usual part of my process as a painter, but anything that happens in life contributes to the work, anything from a small itch to a grand tour. So one hot day in September I found myself standing in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence looking at Botticelli’s Primavera, a beautiful depiction of Venus as the personification of April. Most importantly for me, though, the painting revealed a clever emphasis on the subtle transformations between one season and another. Although Botticelli’s Primavera reads backwards through time from right to left, I suddenly thought of the forward movement of the seasons as a fitting subject and their transitions as a key to painting them. Later, when I came across Annie Dillard’s thought that “there is a bit of every season in each season,” my project found its mantra.

Sandro Botticelli La Primavera, 1477 - 1478

RICHARD PRATT paintings

While still in Italy and unable to paint anything, my own thoughts about the four seasons kept turning and turning, quickly becoming an obsession: I could begin the painting by indicating each season through the changing colors of foliage. I could present each season on a separate canvas, but incorporate effects leftover from the previous season as well as hints of the approaching one. A pattern of movement forward through time and from left to right could rise out of a dynamic repetition of simple shapes. Longing for Italy, but happy to return to my studio after a three week absence, I realized that I was now committed to a very large picture comprised of four canvas panels measuring 48 inches by 48 inches that side by side would add up to a painting four feet tall and sixteen feet wide. My equal commitment to Botticelliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concept of seasonal transition meant that I could not paint these panels as a series of paintings as I usually do, but would have to paint all four at the same time in a small studio. In fact, due to the lack of space there, I was never able to view these panels as one complete painting in my studio.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

I began work with a quick sketch of the four panels showing the shape and placement of the two large tree trunks that I conceived as anchors for the composition. A small sketch like this served as the ‘scaffolding’ for the painting. I tried not to over-think things, preferring a degree of natural awkwardness in it. Once satisfied with the composition, I remained doggedly faithful to it throughout the painting process. More gradually, I devised a ‘protocol’ for the four canvases, an evolving set of rules that would unite the panels visually and give them a sense of belonging together. As is usual of course, in time I ended up bending or violating these rules. This protocol addressed an important element not included in the sketch: the leaves themselves. The new rules required that they be based on four standardized leaf shapes, diminishing in size, each size to be painted in one of three horizontal bands or zones of foliage on the canvas. The rules fell apart, as predicted, when I painted ‘Autumn’ with its swirl of leaves covering the canvas from top to bottom, but the protocol served its purpose overall. The sketching, the creation of picture protocols, the first marks on primed canvas, and the blocking-in of shapes on the canvas are just preliminaries to the complicated process of actually painting a painting. Figuring out the visual relationships between color and light is the primary challenge for me as a painter, and my preference for discreet, flat areas of paint further complicates things. Placing unmodulated areas of color side by side --- think of a map --- can be tricky when trying to maintain clear contrasts between elements and when determining which of these elements will be visually dominant, which one will be light or dark, bright or dull, stand out boldly or blend into the background. So for a painter, the word ‘painting’ is a verb, a loop of continuously repeated action-verbs: painting, looking, judging, deciding, re-painting, looking, judging, deciding, painting again ... on and on. When the most recently devised color for a group of leaves is deemed worthy of permanence, after long hours of painting and repainting, that color can easily influence and determine all the other colors in the painting --- the sky, the tree trunks, the flowers --- and further limit the artist’s options. Color becomes an increasingly difficult puzzle as a painting nears completion, frustrating, but delightful at last, one hopes.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

No painting can be made from a blueprint. New ideas arise daily in reaction to the unfinished painting. Many of the ideas that I incorporated into No Two Years were the result of further thoughts about the seasons and how to represent them in my painting. The tall, abstracted band of grass behind the trees, the stripes of rain in springtime, and the fireflies and flowers were all new ideas discovered along the way. Unoriginal to my plans for the painting, they were nonetheless necessary to its final appearance. A painting becomes familiar, recognizable for what it is, and will be, as the days pass in the studio. At some point, the artist opens his studio door and says, ‘There you are.’ From that point onward, every element in the painting must support this final, dominant image. These supporting elements ---shapes and colors --- are tweaked, sometimes for days on end, until everything works in concert to make the finished painting. This painting began with a simple idea: a desire to show leaves floating through space and time. What was at first no more than a potential idea for a painting expanded enthusiastically in Italy when I encountered Primavera and received the ‘key’ from Botticelli. A quick sketch in the studio, and I had the scaffolding on which to build a painting. Reacting to the painting each day led to additional ideas that made the hard work occasionally exciting. No Two Years lives up to its title, I think. If I were to attempt to paint a

second version based on the same protocol and format, we would in spite of them see an entirely new and different year.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Disruption. We see spring as a liberator after the long lock-up of winter, Primavera bringing rebirth to dormant life, but these two paintings show another side to the season: Spring is disruptive as it breaks through the serenity of winter and shatters the silence of ice and snow.

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Winter into Spring

acrylic on two canvases 48 x 48 inches each 2012

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Heads up. Preoccupied with work and worry, we stride through the city while flocks of leaves roost unnoticed above our heads. This canopy of leaves, alive with change from month to month, drops notice of the seasons at our feet.

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Seasons at Our Feet Spring | Summer | Fall | Winter

acrylic on four canvases 48 x 24 inches each 2012

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Homage. Looking downward, we see the scattered leaves, and taking hold of a rake struggle to collect them while the wind scatters them again and again across the canvas. A rake’s progress, or lack thereof, comes to mind and Hogarth’s eight engravings with that title. Is there a narrative in these eight paintings? Are the leaves acting out an elaborate opera about Tom Rakewell’s downward progress? No. These are shapes scattered by a painter on fields of color while giving thought to Hogarth.

William Hogarth The Heir from A Rake’s Progress, engraved 1722

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Heir acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010/2011

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Levee | The Orgy acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches each 2010/2011

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Richard Pratt paints a series.

Years ago my dog Artemas taught me to look downwards at the ground in the same way that birds taught me to look up at the sky. He was a small dog and an inveterate scavenger, and for this reason had to be watched constantly during our neighborhood walks. In this way I began to appreciate the beauty of cracked concrete sidewalks and the accidental gardens that grew there. In the nineties I painted several nearly abstract paintings based on Artieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s habitual perspective and my new one. A decade later I was obsessed with trees. Their gestural dignity fascinated me and I had painted a dozen or more paintings featuring tree trunks, limbs, tree stumps and foliage. But now, in 2010, my desire was to paint a series of paintings that would be more abstract, more subtle than these. I wanted to somehow suggest the presence of trees without actually showing them. I started looking downwards again. From a high window I could see that flattened lawns and pavements were a lot like canvases. They were often framed by rectangles. Looking downwards at them, there was no requirement for a fixed point of view: one could look towards the east or towards the west, but never upwards. Gravity was so uniformly distributed that the weight of things disappeared. I began to think of the possibility of painting the shadow of a tree on a lawn or leaves that had fallen to the ground. Ultimately, the fallen leaves had more appeal to me. I could see that their unruly mass of uniform shapes would encourage abstraction. Order could present itself in the repetition of shapes, but the repetition itself could be at random. I could use these two poles, orderliness and randomness, in constant tension with each other, to make a series of abstract paintings. Being civilized, of course, I wanted to rake the leaves, gather them up, and return the landscape to order. I thought of how much I hated raking leaves as a kid, how leaves would conspire against me: Stragglers evaded the rake and the wind repeatedly hindered a rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s progress.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

A Rake’s Progress. What a clever pun, I thought, and a perfect title for the

project at hand, for in the early eighteenth century the British artist William Hogarth had also named a series of paintings A Rake’s Progress. Showing the downward ‘progress’ of his protagonist, a rake or feckless ne’er-do-well called Tom Rakewell, Hogarth’s eight paintings were succeeded by a set of highly popular engravings that collectors bought by subscription. I had read Jenny Uglow’s biography of Hogarth several years back and I admired him too much to simply steal the title from him. After all, he had included a favorite dog in his self-portrait painting. So how could I make amends for calling a rake a rake? It occurred to me that if I kept the narrative captions for each of Hogarth’s prints in my mind while painting the paintings, I could respectfully and somewhat humorously parallel his project to my own. Ideas about story could underlay my compositions and give each painting direction while at the same time I could pay homage to Hogarth by keeping him in mind throughout the process. Ultimately, Hogarth helped me paint eight paintings in a series that would have otherwise comprised itself of no more than three to five works. The paintings are mute, of course, and in this way keep a secret about process, a painter’s inside joke between Hogarth and myself. The titles for each of my paintings parallel the titles for Hogarth’s, a mere suggestion that the same narrative is taking place within them. In each panel one sees a scattering of simple leaf shapes over vertical rows that have been ‘raked’ across the canvas. One leaf in each is white, the ‘protagonist,’ or my own Tom Rakewell. The white leaf in each panel is surrounded by chaos that overtly tells no story, and in the last panel, the madhouse, it loses itself to oblivion, drowning among identical white leaves. Perhaps a rake’s only true progress is time.

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Arrest

acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010/2011

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Marriage acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010/2011

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Gambling House

acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010/2011

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Prison acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010/2011

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A Rakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Progress The Mad House acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches 2010/2011

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Feeling. The painter works from what he has seen, remembered, borrowed or imagined. A painting will differ from his intensions, but the feeling of seeing something for the first time, and then a second time, is there. For a painter there is never a separation between feeling and seeing and thinking.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

Vines Series Vines I acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches 2009

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Vines Series Vines II

acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches 2009

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Vines Series Vines III acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches 2009

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Abstract. Abstractions reveal what we share in an instance of recognition: Shapes become trees and leaves, flatness becomes territory, and color becomes the embodiment of or the absence of light . We all see the same painting donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t we? The eyes travel around a gallery, resting where they can, if they can. Paintings do not move, but a treeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leaves are blown forward into time and our point of view becomes nomadic, flitting from wall to wall, panel to panel, edge to edge. And yet paintings defy the passage of time, are static, eternal.

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Street Trees Series Street Trees II acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches 2009

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Aloft Series Aloft I | Aloft II acrylic on canvas 36 x 60 inches each 2008

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The Last Word. Paintings are objects made not to please potential viewers, but to exercise their minds while looking. This takes place wordlessly, with or without pleasing. Born of intellect and memory, paintings exist as things, not thoughts. An alluring skin created by the layering of paint reveals an image and causes us to think, not just of an image but of the skin as well.

RICHARD PRATT paintings

RICHARD PRATT studio Richard Pratt is a painter living and working in Knoxville, Tennessee. He received a BA in Art History from the University of Tennessee followed by graduate studies at New York University. His paintings have been exhibited most recently in Atlanta, Durham and Knoxville.

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