Peter Barrickman
Region: Midwest
My paintings examine subjects ranging from city life to
facilities, maintenance and weather. Although these are
essential elements, I’m more interested in how paintings can
be made. My work is an open exploration of the subject
through a mashup of self-imposed limitations in the way I use
color, media, surface, and structure. My objective is not mastery
of craft but rather activation of my subject through a changing
relationship to the medium. A typical painting is a bricolage of
working parts and improvised repairs. The studio is a laboratory
for confronting the inadequacies of an idealized plan with
the physicality of material. My work has to do with regularly
looking for paintings that reside outside my own expectations.