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I think of my work with the landscape of Weir Farm as a dialogue,
a conversation with a medium and a site. In this conversation,
the landscape's seasons, weather, time and light are implied in
the variations, interpretations and reinterpretations. The fit
of the medium to the subject matter is a metaphor; just as Nature
creates unique, particular variations of the landscape so my mixed
media painted transfers express an analogous order within a series.
The original motif is visible in each variation, yet no two are
exactly alike.
J. Alden Weir, who
was both a painter and printmaker, built a portable studio pulled
by oxen and used oil paints packaged in tubes in order to paint
the landscape, directly, out of doors. These were two technological
and artistic choices that, in his day, were new. I too am responding
to the landscape through a contemporary medium, consistent with
my temperament, artistic vision and period.
My mixed media painted
transfers are hybrid print-based works on paper that incorporate
field work, photography, computer editing, digital printing, traditional
printmaking, and hand painting. The merging of pigmented digital
information with handwork and 19th and 20th century painting and
printmaking technology embraces traditional artistic practice
while using modern tools and techniques.
The larger context
for my artistic project, Songs for My Father, is a body
of nearly 1,000 works, inspired by the land and sea, in various
media, dedicated to my late father, a Norwegian commercial fisherman.
I painted the landscape, a long-standing Nordic subject, in and
around Acadia National Park, Maine, during the 1980's, and have
worked on Monhegan Island since 1995. In winter 1999, while an
artist-in-residence at Weir Farm, I began to explore the woodlands
as a complement to the seacoast.
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Michael Torlen
is an Associate Professor of Visual Art at Purchase College, State
University of New York where he teaches painting and drawing.
Mr. Torlen has exhibited widely, including one-person exhibitions
at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Luise Ross Gallery,
New York, NY; and the Alexander Milliken Gallery, New York, NY,
among others. His work is in numerous collections including the
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, JP Morgan Chase, Pepsico Inc.,
and Deloitte & Touche.
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