Larose

A long overdue shout-out to Steven Larose of Fish or Cut Bait.
Steven, a forerunner of the artblogging community makes these wonderful ethereal paintings that seem to have an extensive network of sources. They call to mind a vast variety of possibilities, from “a fetus growing black in fecund earth womb” (Geese Bill) to “energy and cigarette burns to let us know to change reels”.... I am drawn to these paintings, not so much for what they might allude to, but I think it is, that at a time when spatial and/or conceptual tension seem to hold a certain prevalence in painting (a la Alexander Ross or even Amy Sillman), Steven's seem to inhabit an anti-tension, a kind of plateauing of both concept and form, or, the markings of a direct consciousness of place. They bring to mind the Japanese spatial concept MA, which Steven and I briefly discussed a while back (for MA, look up MA in the search blog box). See more of Stevens work here.