Corydon Cowansage
My paintings explore the psychology of space and the relationships
between architecture, nature, the body, and abstraction. Using
repeating forms like blades of grass, bricks, roof shingles, leaves,
and fence slats, I make meditative optical abstractions that creep
into representation.
Ranging in scale from six inches to nine feet, my work often
locates the viewer in awkward spatial situations. Viewers are
pressed up against a wall, squeezed between spaces, pulled into
a hole, or pushed to the ground. My paintings produce uncanny
perceptual shifts as they flip-flop between graphic abstraction and
more naturalistic representation. Flat geometries might suddenly
appear to have depth and mass. Space is folded or compressed,
perspective and scale are askew, and access is blocked.
I often think of the forms in my paintings in relation to the body—
bricks are fleshy, leaves have veins, grass stands in for hair or
fingers or tongues, and dirt becomes skin. Forms almost touch,
poke, rub.