Christopher Ballantyne

Gallery Affiliations: Steven Zevitas Gallery, Hosfelt Gallery

Region: Pacific Coast

Website: http://www.chrisballantyne.com

I take ordinary things from suburban to industrial subjects and draw them in a way that would suggest to the viewer a feeling of being out of place. In order to reconsider these ordinary things I draw them in a way not far removed from basic notes or sketches with a very straightforward approach to rendering. I use drawings from a vocabulary of images ranging from pools, houses, and fences, to highway overpasses. They are drawn from memory and recognizable, while the context or arrangement may be unusual. In an autobiographical sense, they are based on places I have been or lived while often moving around the United States in a military family.

My work draws on the American landscape where property is prominently divided and no space is unaccounted for. For instance, the fences can be used to suggest a question of what kind of space might be within and whether or not it is used to contain or keep out. There is a sense of space within the picture plane defined by the line as well as a sense of space that the type of fence; wooden, cement, or chain link, might suggest as well. I have a particular interest in the intersections and boundaries used in my drawings, be it an intersection of road and fence, an overpass, or the intersection of a fence running across a tree.