Clark Walding’s paintings glow. The aching, haunting, mystic blues that he achieves seem to pierce a clean path through the retinal nerve, project like a luminous, Buddhist “Blue Sky Mind” onto the back wall of the skull and then melt down the brain stem to finally collect and pool somewhere behind the sternum.
Inspired both by images of Antarctic ice and the work of 13th century Buddhist monk Muqi Fachang, these paintings are beautiful because of the way that that blue pool of reflected light pulling under the breastbone tickles and troubles us. The paintings of "Evanescence," on view May 13 - June 13, 2022, have a gravity that supports, allowing us to look, see, and to remember.
