Mike Capp and importance of not understanding.

I was looking at the artwork by Mike Capp currently hanging in the hallway gallery at Projectline, admiring the whimsy of his robots, when someone asked me, "I wonder what that's about, the rainbow vomit?" I looked at it for a while longer and I replied, "I don't know. I don't always think it's about anything." That's really where Mike's paintings sit with me. They don't really mean anything dangerous or angsty or irksome. There's no bubbling social commentary. His paintings which incorporate his young childrens' drawings aren't meant to provoke the unarticulated terrors of childhood. They're just drawings of monsters and superheros and robots. I know Mike. I know that even though there's plenty of angst behind his humor, more so there's a playful, impish, boy's mind, full of cartoons and KISS memorabilia. His technique is solid and clean, so he affords himself the privilege of choosing subject material that loose and silly, while still keeping a close eye on small details of color and composition. He paints what feels good and what results are paintings that are funny and frivolous, in a good way. It's not as important to understand what his paintings mean, as it is to understand that they are just what they appear to be. Personally, robots spewing rainbow is delightful and doesn't mean anything more than that.

charlie isoe

I want to paint like Charlie Isoe today. His mixed media portraits are especially moving. There's nothing particularly beautiful about them, except that they make me forget that I'm looking at a painting. The skin, the expressions, are so transluscent, I forget that I'm looking at paint on canvas or paper. I don't know what I can say about them technically. Technically they're just so much more than anything I understand about painting. How do you even do that with spray paint and charcoal? And the layering of surreal over real...great. Really great. I am enjoy the portraits of women the most. They're simultaneously sumptuous and misongynistic, sexual and messed up, pretty, not pretty. Sometimes I come across artists who remind me that I think inside a very small box. The opression, depression, the thin veneer of normal over inner crazy in the faces of his subjects reminds me of my own limits. What I really see here is his fine drawing and so much attention to detail, that he can afford to ignore it.

This snapped into my consciousness via Artistaday.com.

christopher charlie isoe