REVIEWS OF DESCENDING ORDERS SERIES 2005

Jason Willaford: Descending Order

Mary Anne Redding

Nine years ago, Jason Willaford turned away from the academic narrative oil paintings of his earlier career and began to explore encaustic as an appropriate medium for his work. The word encaustic comes from Latin - encausticus and Greek enkaustos - burnt in; or enkaiein - to burn in. The durability of wax and its power to resist atmospheric changes and effects were well known to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians who used wax not only in embalming mummies and preserving sailing ships but also in creating encaustic painting using colored pigments mixed with beeswax. Because it is impervious to moisture, encaustic media does not easily darken or yellow with time. Many contemporary artists have their own unique recipes for mixing encaustic depending on the desired surface effect and Willaford is no different in carefully guarding his unique concoction. The basic components are beeswax, copal (Damar varnish crystals) and/or Carnauba wax. Dry pigments, oil, or encaustic paint sticks are added for color. The encaustic mixture is applied to a canvas or panel and reheated to fuse the paint into a uniform enamel-like finish. The encaustic surface can be polished to a high gloss, modeled, sculpted, textured, or combined with collage materials. The hot wax cools immediately, so an artist must work quickly, as there is no drying time, however, the surface can be carefully reworked.

At the same time Willaford began to work with encaustic, he also began to describe himself as a typically M.A.L.E. painter. Atypically, however, in his own creative lexicon M.A.L.E. means More Abstract Linear Evolution, which the artist uses to describe the progression of his visceral thinking. In his most recent series, Descending Order, which opened at the recently re-located Galleri Urbane on February 15, 2005, Willaford continues to transform the familiar into the abstract, although with vestiges tugging at recognizable imagery. His thickly applied surfaces glow from within revealing nearly transparent layers of built up color. The marks of his palate knife and brushes create the bars of a private rectangular window allowing the viewer only a glimpse of a distant impressionistic landscape through blocks of color reminiscent of color field paintings as in No Where, 2004 (encaustic on panel, 27 x 36 inches) and That Place, 2004 (encaustic on panel, 35 x 48 inches). What is unique to Willaford's vision is the penetration of the flat surface to reveal an ambiguous view. Is the view an exterior glimpse of the seashore or desert vistas or is it a revelation of the artist's interior landscape? Does answering those questions really matter to appreciating the work? Although the artist maintains that it was not his studied intention to suggest recognizable landscapes in this series, he does readily discuss a similarity between the vast horizons of the West Texas hills and the beaches of his native homeland in Tampa, Florida. He says: "There is a slope or curve, if you will, in the terrain surrounding Marfa that is oceanic. The tranquil feeling you attain here is akin to being adrift on a rolling sea." Because Willaford focuses on surface and color when he is working letting his subconscious intrude, as it will, it would be almost impossible for the viewer not to recognize the influence of that elusive horizon line whether floating above the desert or on the ocean in these paintings. The artist acknowledges that if he could tap into one element of the collective human condition, he will have accomplished what he set out to do.

The Descending Order Series reveal the artist's progressively linear evolution are directly related to his earlier series, Stars and Stripes, shown in one of Galleri Urbane's temporary exhibitions during a previous Chanti weekend blitz several years ago. The paintings in Stars and Stripes were inspired by the peculiarly American phenomena of graffiti on train cars. The artist observed the tagged trains both rushing across the landscape and up close when he worked with graffiti artists in Silver City, New Mexico to learn their techniques and make leave his own marks on the trains. Like the older series, most of the new paintings use a fairly monochromatic palette -- soft blues, pewter grays, softly subdued lavenders, creamy beige, and silvery sage nearly drained of color by the desert sun or seen through the early morning mist hugging a shoreline. A few paintings are punctuated by horizontal stripes of blood red lines. Several works, however, Far and Wide, Receding View and From Here, introduce a brighter palette with vibrantly saturated reds, oranges, and sienna. Receding View offers evidence of the artist's mastery both of color and of the encaustic medium. Like the best Rothko, the complementary colors of red and blue cause the canvas to vibrate with barely restrained emotion. The work has a highly sensuous appeal. It would be interesting to see the paintings done on an even larger scale in which, like Rothko's, the viewer is absorbed unequivocally into the color field. Size aside, in observing this artist's work over the past several years, I believe he has evolved to a place where the paintings deserve a sustained relationship with their audience.

Mary Anne Redding is director and curator at the New Mexico State University Art Gallery. She recently published an essay in Visions of America: Contemporary Art from the Essl Collection and the Sonnebend Collection, New York catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Sammlung Essl Kunst der Gegenwart in Vienna, Austria. Redding has recently received a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in support of two exhibitions featuring the work of regional artists of the southwest.

Written For a solo show by James Bae, Big Bend Sentinel - Marfa ,Texas

Encaustic Painter Marfa Artist Jason Willaford, a continuum of the Descending Order Series, his paintings convey sublime images perhaps of our surroundings, what is hidden and sometimes revealed in these translucent luminous works. Reduction is addition, his canvas thick with appliqu» of encaustic follows a systemic path: apply, form, and render. In some paintings a tracery of line is incised leaving a gesture of this practice, where a millimeter of depth transforms the image something other than painting .The subtlety of the relief effect creates a transitional effect for reflection to delve upon.

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