Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Chamberlain.
Patrick, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
In understanding a journey it is important to reflect on the first step. Everything follows from the first step. I remember well the first step for me occurring well before kindergarten on Kornblum Ave. perhaps three most probably four I found a magical yellow pebble. When I rubbed it on something it left traces of itself behind. I remember how the world popped open when I rubbed it on a screen door. The experience of the highness of that gesture has never left me.
That popping open, I now know to be my first experience of pictorial space. The critique of this pictorial space I experienced almost immediately and I was compelled to apply a nailbrush and soapy water to the magical marks. The critique was unpleasant but I am pleased to say was no match for the obduracy of the mark. I now understand that the magical pebble was a broken, worn and discarded piece of someone’s yellow crayon.
The brush or crayon is like Pullman’s subtle knife from his eponymous fantasy novel. And as soon as a child evidences some familiarity with this subtle knife and its abilities to open pictorial worlds well-meaning but evil spirits and familiars insist that the talent be compelled to imitate the evident world rather than open the imaginative world. Most of my painterly journey has been in a struggle with these spirits and familiars. It is only with the maturity that has come to me with age and experience that I have at last been able to put the these to abeyance. And it is in that abeyance that the work is made of which I understand myself to be the efficient cause.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am a painter. My dominant interest is in the experience of pictorial space both for myself and the viewer of the finished work. I do not make paintings of things. I present in contrast to represent. I want a painting to be an opportunity for the viewer to experience his/their pictorial judgement in action. The most persistent challenge for me is to resist the propensity to illustrate. So, by art world convention I am probably a painter of abstraction though much of what passes for abstraction appears to me as illustrative of a style. There is a unique honesty to painting. It simultaneously presents the illusion and the means by which the illusion is affected. That is a painterly ethics.
Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
Finds the least intrusive manner for the support of your material existence and for the rest – be patient and persistent.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
My paintings have a capable creator, that seems evident to me. What my paintings most require is an intelligent accomplished curator. Someone capable of tracing out the material, formal, efficient and even teleological aspects of the mass of work. Of seeing distinctions and similarities and making these credible. Metaphorically, my work needs it’s Adam. I have the fortune to be represented by Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago.
Contact Info:
- Address: google me
- Other: http://kavigupta.com/artist/patrick-chamberlain/
Image Credit:
photo of artist credit Jessica Stockholder
photos of paintings credit the artist
Photographs of paintings are like the smell of bread baking to a sandwich. No hungry person confuses one with the other.
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