Jean Alexander Frater
I experiment with the medium of painting—reconstructing the
distinct roles that paint, raw canvas, and rectilinear support play
in art-making. The paintings are concrete and abstract. I work in
collaboration with the material, asking it to have a voice in the
outcome—to reveal itself. I create circumstances that allow the
materials to resist, or comply with, various manipulations. There
is a consistent tone of self-referentiality, which allows the work
to sidestep heavy intention and preference the cycle of action/
observation/discovery that happens in the studio.
Gravity propels the black paint down the canvas, and the painted
surface directs or changes the quality of the black line. Canvas
is stretched, bent, torn, or folded around a frame. The object
both responds to this physical manipulation, and is changed
by the image it carries on its surface. The idea of background
and foreground is shifted away from the surface and onto the
material itself.