Robert Kogge
Region: Northeast
As a result of preparatory drawings developing beyond their purpose into finished works, I began drawing directly on unprimed canvas with graphite and currently I am using colored pencils and ink wash on canvas. This approach coalesced painting and drawing to a single process that allows the earliest stages of the image to develop undetached to the finished work. A need for the images to evolve to the point where the work can tell me where it wants or needs to go is the most time consuming process.... like humans, they crawl before they walk. The materials I use elect the heavy weave of the canvas to be the dominant, but impersonal, unifying mark throughout each work. This aspect of the images results in an even distillation of positive and negative space that heightens the implied symbolism and visualizes a particulate profile of the atmosphere.
These works presents more what is recalled in the mind's eye, aspiring to hold the viewers' attention for reasons beyond what is being depicted and invites them to challenge their own perception of reality. In this way, I hope meaning will emerge from the viewers' own impressions with vision less encumbered by what they think they know.
More generally, I try to draw the commonplace to an uncommon state by stressing issues of balance, harmony, order, and calm.
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