“I was always on the edge of abstraction without being an abstract painter. I was always interested in the brushstroke and the way different forms appeared on the surface.”
“People think that I’m painting Vermont, but I keep saying I’m painting paintings.”
Wolf Kahn: Excerpts from a Conversation with Christopher Volpe
Think about how tantalizing the smell of toast is, how a whiff sends your mind on a journey. Colour, tone and shape can do the same.
If it’s a landscape, we interpret what we see in the painting through our memories and favourite locations. It becomes different places to different people, and where exactly inspired the artist is of interest but ultimately less relevant.
Depicting rather than describing. Portraying rather than delineating. Suggesting rather than telling. Leaving things unsaid and unseen, except in the viewer’s eyes.