Artists

• Storm Tharp

Statement

Opening Reception:
Saturday, February 8, 2025
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Limited Availability, RSVP required to info@pdxcontemporaryart.com

Storm Tharp
COMPANY

In many ways these new paintings are about what I love. Of course, my work is always about what I love - but often, my work is led by ambition, and I don't always begin with what appeals to me – especially when the creative objective is to uncover or identify something I have yet to understand. In this way, the affection for the work is retroactive; I learn to love it. This can be said of about 90 percent of what I make. And if you know me well, you know that the hand-wringing and doubt that comes with this methodology has taken years off my life and added lines to the corners of my eyes. Often, I must admit, with pleasure.

I have maligned the portrait for years, hoping desperately to find myself in new terrain. But, I realize, there is likely no subject or landscape I understand with as much curiosity and fondness. The proportions I trace in heads and shoulders remain the most handsome of all forms. And the art historical tradition of the portrait is one of the most pleasing: from Holbein to Hals, Ingres to Irving Penn, and from Utamaro to Alice Neel. These are the works that slay me and hold me in their thrall, memorizing every trick that I can steal. And steal, I have.

I meet artists every day who are only thirty years farther removed from the historical past than myself. They seem centuries more remote from the past, and not because we are old and they are young. Most of my peers found the past because we were looking for a way out - not a way in. We were looking for precedents upon which to found a revolution - submerging ourselves in murky swamps of unfashionable objects, stretching our toes downward to find a new bottom from which we might push off. We wanted things that we could use, things we could steal, borrow, misappropriate, or cross pollinate.

— Dave Hickey, Orphans in the Storm, Pirates and Farmers, Pg 53

I have indulged in color that delights me: persimmon, hot coral and Campari. Mischievous and illogical swaths of lavender and violet along the lines of a silhouette. Dove grey in the highlights, purple lake and mulberry in the shadows. Backgrounds of neutral absence. Stage sets without context. No place. Narratives made entirely from facial expression, bodily gesture and attire. And I have gone out of my way to evince the brush: there may be nothing that brings more pleasure than a subconscious, perfectly-fluid brush stroke, channeling representation and abstraction simultaneously. Thank you, John Singer Sargent.

Any trace of laboriousness, any evidence that the artist has sweated over their work will destroy the grace of the painting. Many painters achieve in the first sketch of their work, as though guided by a sort of fire of inspiration, a certain measure of boldness; but afterwards in finishing it, the boldness vanishes.

— Giorgio Vasari, 1511 - 1574

And of course, there is theater. I was once asked why my work was glamorous and I winced and attempted to crawl away from the discussion. But I realize now, I should have engaged the question with confidence. My work is often glamorous but it is not without a reflection in muddy waters. I love the aching desire to become something else. The allure to extend and reach and transform. And I suppose this is the central crux of my interest in performance and theatricality. That risky urge to shine brightly, which is admirable and sometimes tragic. I am interested in the face, body and performance that brings all of that raw vulnerability to the surface - in return for knowledge and ultimatley, love.

If one reflects upon it, we exist only in the brief instant when we are seduced-
by whatever moves us: an object, a face, an idea, a word , a passion.

— Baudrillard