John Fincher, The Line of Nature: A Continuing Exploration by LewAllen Galleries

JohnFincher The Line of Nature: A Continuing Exploration

DOWNTOWN

JohnFincher The Line of Nature: A Continuing Exploration AUGUST 3 - SEPTEMBER 2. 2012 DOWNTOWN GALLERY

LewAllenGalleries Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com cover: Yosimite Pine, 2012, oil on linen, 38” x 50”

John Fincher: The Line of Nature: A Continuing Exploration

Nippon #4, 2010, oil on linen, 54” x 84”

John Fincher’s singular aesthetic brings into dialogue a diverse range of formal strategies and art historical references that reflect our rapidly changing world. Fincher derives emotional resonance from a combination of rigorouslybalanced composition, succinct brushwork, dramatic shadowing, an underlying love of and proficiency for drawing, and the application of intense points of contrasting colors to punctuate complex linear arrangements. Imbued with a profound concern for structural dynamics, the artist’s current exhibition takes as its central focus paintings and drawings of trees (and some cacti) that merge technical precision with ample semiotic flexibility.

calligraphic traditions. Exercising a profound economy of means, his work unites a range of art historical and personal references to offer new understandings of America’s natural and cultural landscapes. A spectacular monograph entitled John Fincher — the first comprehensive volume dedicated to the artist’s nearly 40year career — will be released in August 2012 from Radius Books. With essays by James Moore, William Peterson and Mila Pajes Merriman, as well as illuminating interviews with the artist, this is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to chronicling John Fincher’s extraordinary art making history and process.

Distinguished by a singular blend of sensuality and severity, the work of John Fincher is informed equally by the forceful, taut lines of German Expressionist painting and the understated subtlety inherent to Japanese

On the occasion of the release of this long-overdue recognition of a stellar career, it is revealing and appropriate 2

State University; excerpted from the catalog for John Fincher, the 1991 solo exhibition at Elaine Horwitch Galleries.

to look back at some critical commentary on the work of this remarkable artist. Paintings, monotypes and drawings of John Fincher memorialize – indeed celebrate – what the artist calls modestly “the trappings of the West.” These “trappings” encapsulate references that are both familiar and totemic of the Great American Frontier, and Fincher’s distinctive renditions of them operate as a richly diverse semiotic archive of the West’s role as a reservoir of distinctly American pride, strength and individualism. The American West is firmly in our culture as a place of new beginnings, and the work of John Fincher captures the visual details of this vast and mythic place of optimism, renewal, and opportunity. It functions to enrich our sense of the West’s imposing grandeur and extraordinary power to ignite an imagination of boundless possibility.

Identified, as he’s become, with specific genres of imagery — signature, Southwestern landscapes; still-life riffs on iconic “wild west” impedimenta, like boots, saddles, guns and knives, and, most famously, his close-on studies of gorgeous, oddly menacing cactus; and not least, spectacular studies of trees and branches — it’s clear Fincher has always understood that, as Matisse said, “creation begins with vision … the artist’s feeling expressing itself through the object must make the object worthy of interest. It says only what it is made to say.” Fincher’s search for what to paint has always come naturally, especially when one considers that the success of any work of art resides not in the motif or even in that which is depicted, but in how the artist’s vision has invested his subjects with the frisson of revelation.

The capacity of Fincher’s work to flourish at an aesthetic level of sophisticated beauty while distilling powerful meanings resident in ordinary objects of the land and culture of the American West contributes an enduring importance for the artist’s nearly 40-year career.

-Jan Adlmann, from the forward to John Fincher, the forthcoming monograph from Radius Books. How often do we use words for sharpness or cutting or pointedness as praise for an artist? “He draws with acuity … with precision … with a bite.” “His line is incisive … probing.” “There is a sting to his technique.” “He works at the cutting-edge….” And Fincher’s brush does perform a knife’s duties, whittling shapes and carving spaces. He seems to cut and slice the contours and shadows. Often he scratches out letters, words, and outlines, sometimes with the stick-end of a brush. Fincher’s exhibitions at the Elaine Horwitch Galleries in Santa Fe and Scottsdale have shown that he is a master of that peculiar genre, the vertical still-life. In their vertical compositions, each of Fincher’s objects, like O’Keeffe’s skyborne deerskulls and pelvic bones, gain more singular importance than they might have had bunched up on a tabletop. But the paintings also become more self-reflexive, toying with their own status as vertical planes against the wall. Here again is another heightening of the tension between object and painting. And in his juicy, painterly renderings Fincher allows full sway to all the mysterious, fascinating “annoyance” that Gertrude Stein found in oil painting:

- Excerpted from LewAllen Galleries’ exhibition catalog John Fincher: Enduring Terrain, July 30 – September 5, 2010. [The] climate in which we presently find ourselves, when it seems history has been declared dead and progress an illusion, permits a certain anarchic disregard for the stringent rules of recent historical process. There is fresh air blowing, as the merchants of bracing ugliness seem increasingly to be addressing only each other in an ever narrowing circle. The rest of the country fragments (as the world is fragmenting now from centrally wielded power) into regionalism or simply into individual personalities who, in spite of it all, feel the urge to continue the tradition of painting. What their place in history will be, of course, only time will tell. But as the past has shown, excellent virtuosity has staying power. John Fincher has been painting for a quarter of a century now, and it is perfectly clear that he belongs to the virtuosic class of artist who shamelessly beguiles the viewer by his artistic prowess, his sense of elegance (chic even), his absolute knowledge of his materials and their potential for his wellcontrolled and complicated ends.

Really in everybody’s heart there is a feeling of annoyance at the inevitable existence of an oil painting in relation to what it has painted people, objects and landscapes. And indeed and of course… that is not what an oil painting is. An oil painting is an oil painting, and these things are only

-Mira Pajes Merriman, Professor of Art History, Wichita

the way an oil painter makes an oil painting. -William Peterson, writing for Artspace Magazine, winter 1980 It is perhaps not surprising that the theoretical reading of a subject as sign or symbol offers a strong initial attraction (and that semiotics has become a standard art historical methodology), for we are inclined to attempt to create meaning and develop stories from the reading of signs, even abstract ones. But these meanings, once grasped, tend to dissipate quickly or become static. Once understood, the subject gives up its information almost instantaneously, losing the endless fascination that comes with looking closely at those elements of a painting that are difficult. James Elkins, in a challenge to the interpretation of pictures by means of semiotic theory, has argued that “images are complex in the only ways that a structure can be truly complex: they are partly inside and partly outside systematic, linguistic, logical, and mathematical structures of meaning.” Understanding them “is an attempt to say what happens in this inchoate half-light between the splendor of rational representation and the darkness of nonverbal marking.” This area of non-verbal marking is Fincher’s real terrain; it is where he finds the joy in painting, in this area where pictures are difficult. By linking difficulty with a consummate skill in drawing and an unabashed commitment to beauty and elegance, he differs greatly from many of his peer generation who have sought to equate difficulty in painting (by broad consensus, a desirable aspect of modernist quality) with the avoidance of those characteristics. But the very fact of this sensuous appeal of complex drawing and rich surface is what keeps us focused on the difficulty, on what is important about painting in our own time. The simple fact is that we are attracted by things beautiful and we are intrigued by what we can’t understand. -James Moore, Director of the Albuquerque Museum; excerpted from the catalog for John Fincher, the 1999 solo exhibition at LewAllen Galleries.

Utah, 2012, oil on linen, 50” x 38” 5

Taos: Winter, 2012, oil on linen, 50” x 40” 6

Blue Leaf Limb, 2011, oil on linen, 36” x 42” 7

Sundown, 2012, oil on linen, 24” x 36” 8

Warm Pine, 2011, oil on linen, 28” x 30” 9

From the Terrace, 2011, oil on linen, 30” x 36” 10

Sandia Pine, 2011, oil on paper, 30” x 22” 11

Split, 2011, oil on linen, 32” x 30” 12

Fall, 2012, oil on linen, 20” x 16” 13

Yellowstone Pine, 2011, oil on linen, 40” x 70”

Bramble, 2011, oil on paper, 22” x 30” 16

High Noon, 2011, oil on paper, 22” x 30” 17

San Angelo, 2012, oil on linen, 70” x 58” 18

Summer Cactus 1, 2011, oil on paper, 30” x 22” 19

Summer Cactus 2, 2011, oil on paper, 30” x 22” 20

La Cienega, 2012, oil on linen, 20” x 16” 21

Tall Tree, 2011, oil on linen, 20” x 8” 22

Midnight, 2011, oil on linen, 20” x 16” 23

Black Sea, 2011, oil on paper, 15.5” x 11.75” 24

Rolling Clouds, 2011, oil on paper, 15.5” x 11.75” 25

Big Apple, 2011, oil on panel, 11” x 14” 26

Late November, 2012, oil on linen, 32” x 70” 27

Book Brush #1, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 28

Book Brush #2, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 29

Book Brush #3, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 30

Book Brush #4, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 31

Book Brush #5, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 32

Book Brush #6, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 33

Book Brush #7, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 34

Book Brush #8, 2012, oil on linen, 10” x 8” 35

John Fincher Born: 1941, Hamilton, TX

Education: Texas Technological College (BA), University of Oklahoma (MFA)

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2012 The Line of Nature: A Continuing Exploration, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2011 Recent Works, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2010 Enduring Terrain, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2009 Speak for the Trees, Andrea Friesen Gallery, Sun Valley, ID Fincher, Johnson, Mothner, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2008 John Fincher, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2007 Out West: The Great American Landscape, Meridian International Center, Washington D.C.; National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Shanghai Museum Out of Oklahoma: Contemporary Artists from Ruscha to Andoe, Price Tower Arts Center, Bartlesvillle, OK On Paper I, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2006 Spirited Expressions, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Collages, Monotypes, and Paintings, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2005 Re-representing Representation VII, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY 2004 Boughs, Branches, & Limbs, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK Limbs/Branches/Barriers: Recent Work, 2000-2004, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2003 Three by Five to Eleven by Fourteen: Gallery Selections, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM National Drawing Exhibition, Fred Kline Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2001 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM Group Exhibition, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Pomona, NJ 1999 Realism Meets Abstraction, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 1997 LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1996 The Jan Perry Mayer Collection: Works on Paper, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO Magnificent Subject II, St. John’s College Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Contemporary New Mexico Artists: Sketches and Schemas, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM Terra Paradiso, Hand Graphics Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1995 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 1994 Artistas Contemporaneo De Nuevo Mexico, Mayor’s Gallery,

Guadalajara, Mexico Realism ’94, Fletcher Gallery Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM Contemporary Realism, Halls Gallery, Kansas City, MO Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Contemporary Landscapes, group touring exhibition organized by the Santa Fe Council for the Arts and the New Mexico Governor’s Gallery 1991 Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1990 J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Cactus!, Group Exhibition, Old Pueblo Museum, Tucson, AZ 1989 Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ 1988 Common Ground, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM Landscapes, Haggar Gallery, University of Dallas, Dallas, TX 1987 Rivers, Stella, Fincher, Elaine Horwitch Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 1986 The New West, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO 1985 Nimbus Gallery, Dallas, TX Segal Gallery, New York, NY Egypt, Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1984 Arts New Mexico, Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, Organization of American States, Washington, DC Route 66 Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 1983 The 38th Corcoran Biennial of American Painting and Second Western States Exhibition, Concoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Abilene Homecoming, Abilene Fine Arts Museum, Abilene TX Connecticut College Print Invitational, Connecticut College, New London, CT 1982 Salon D’Automne, Artistes Contemporains Du Sud-Quest Des ‘Etats-Unis, Grand Palais, Paris, France Santa Fe/Taos, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE; Travel Exhibition to Spiva Art Center, Joplin, MO Wyoming State Museum, Cheyenne WY; Salina Art Center, Salina, KS; Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, IA; Abilene Fine Arts Museum, Abilene, TX Art in the West, Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT Works on Paper, Midland College, Midland, TX 1981 Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX 1993 1992

1980

1979 1978 1977 1976 1973

Artists in the American Desert, Western Association of Art Museums, Circulations to: Fresno Art Center, Fresno, CA; Kaiser Center, Oakland, CA; Laguna Florida Art Museum, Austin, TX; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK; University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont, TX; Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA; Arapahoe College, Littleton, CO; Woodson Museum, Wausau, WI; Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, UT Here and Now: 35 Artists in New Mexico, The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Introductions 80, Moody Gallery, Houston, TX Group Exhibition, New Mexico Painters, The Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Santa Fe Festival of the Arts, Santa Fe, NM Eight New Mexico Painters, The Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ New Mexico in Toronto, Linda Durham Gallery, Toronto, Canada Robert Rice Gallery, Houston, TX New Mexico Contemporary Painters, Tyler Art Museum, Tyler, TX Southwestern Biennial, Museum of New Mexico, Fine Arts Division, Santa Fe, NM University Gallery, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA

IBM, Tucson, AZ Marriot Corporation Marshall Field Company, Chicago, IL Massachusetts Envelope Company McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX Mid-Kansas Savings and Loan Museum of Abilene, TX National Conservatory, USSR New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM North Texas Savings and Loan Northern Illinois University Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA Oklahoma City Museum of Art, OK Phoenician Hotel, Phoenix, AZ Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY Richard M. Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Texas International Airlines Texas Instruments University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ University of Oklahoma Museum of Art, Norman, OK Oklahoma City Museum, Oklahoma, OK US West Westheimer Collection, Oklahoma City, OK Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS: Albuquerque Museum of Art & History, NM American Continental Amoco, Denver, CO ARCO, Los Angeles, CA Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Bank of America Bethel College, North Newton, KS Cole-Taylor Financial Group, Chicago, IL Crescent Hotel, Phoenix, AZ Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Eldorado Hotel, Santa Fe, NM Fannin Bank, Houston, TX Frito-Lay Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Taos, NM Honolulu Academy of Art, HI