In Painting Thinking is Painting

Erickson Gallery, Portland, OR

September 2 - October 4, 2021
As the practice of painting becomes more expansive and boundaries blur, Painting and its parameters demand further scrutiny. In Painting Thinking Is Painting, WAVE contemporary members Nicholas Moler-Gallardo, Claire Elliot, Rachael Zur, Alan Page, and Kelda Van Patten consider their work through the lens of painting–as medium, practice, and trajectory. The painted surface is no longer a limitation and the expansion of this field gives life to the medium. Working within a collective, conversations between the artists rebound as they interrogate common painting tropes such as still-life, landscape, abstraction, portrait and more that beg for further discussion. The works of Moler-Gallardo, Elliot, Zur, Page, and Van Patten live as documentations through mark-making that have merged with the surface, establishing an interdependence of surface and painting, while simultaneously demonstrating and deconstructing the essence of painting.