Lex Braes

A Dozen

A Dozen by Lex Braes
at Melville House
Melville House Gallery, January 7 - February 13, 2015

A selection of 12 brush drawings from 2014, stemming from the earliest collaborative improvisations and culminating into what would become the major motif of the series Full Circle.

The dozen brush drawings have their inspirational source in the collaborative sessions made during an ongoing choreography project for dance and painting. My collaboration partner is the dancer Annie Wang and we are working on a live performance project. Hundreds of free-improv drawings have been made, I then re-interpret in private with a slower more deliberate hand. Time must be allowed for the deeper visual considerations and the contemplation necessary. Discovering abstract possibilities from the instinctively made then translating into abstract realities. Ideas emerge but are never imposed in the process, from first marks to last.

The dozen works on paper are representative of the evolution, from a few lines motifs are formed and from the simplest visual beginnings they move towards more complex, structures, culminating in the largest work Full Circle (12). Full Circle is made of three separate (minor) motifs that evolve into one (major) motif, included is a study of motif #1 (6) whose source is as much from a personal memory of a mountain seen in Andalucia, deep feelings surface after deep looking and my feeling for marks and instinctive responsiveness plays into the process. Being open yet rigorously critical is a fine balance, too much on either side of this divide and its all lost.

The planar movements and currents of line, the tremors and spatial volumes, forms located and suspended are all conjured in the mind’s eye.

Covering over marks has become as much a part of my painting process as making marks, (5) allows another round, but another surface changes things also, occasionally the covering gestures take precedent over any preconceived or imagined visual hierarchy (11).