Clifford Elgin
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I’m a painter based in Portland, Oregon. From my window, I can see the footprint of the house where my great-grandmother spent part of her childhood. I grew up in California, traveled around the world for several years after high school, and studied painting at RISD. When it’s not too cold, I’m outside working plein air studies. Otherwise I’m inside working with oils and egg tempera while listening to people talk about art history.
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I make narrative paintings and drawings that arrive in the middle of a story, leaving the viewer to assemble what came before and imagine what may come next. I want the work to carry something of the atmosphere found in an episode of The Twilight Zone or in the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Philip K. Dick. My aim is to identify and give form to the unknown.
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I am interested in the arc of abstract art from Pollock to the many generations of painters working in his wake. Much of twentieth-century abstraction emphasized gesture, personal expression, and the physical act of painting itself. Large canvases bearing the traces of rapid decisions and energetic mark-making became central to the tradition.
When I start an ‘abstract’ work, I always approach it with the mindset that its going to be a long drawn out endeavor. I build, erase, obscure, and reveal, allowing the work to develop through a process of accumulation and excavation. While working, I often feel less like a painter than a sculptor, slowly carving away at a block of stone to uncover a form hidden within.
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I have not yet had a gallery exhibition, though I would like to. I am drawn to artists such as René Magritte, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Marsden Hartley, and Edvard Munch, and would be interested in working with a program that engages related concerns. Whether that context still exists is an open question.
Education:
MFA - Southern Illinois 2005
BFA - RISD 2002