* CONVULSIVE MOTION | 43 Images

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when the monster stirs to life for the first time, the book says there is a “convulsive motion” in the limbs.  Invoking something like a newborn animal scrambling clumsily and desperately to stand, or arms reaching after long sleep with tingling fingers too weak to pull ones weight forward.    

The limbs hang and dangle.  Lines describe what is there and what is not there.  The carved dark shapes, the backs of a hands and elbows are solidly described against a field of smoky neutral pale light.  The lines arc toward the lurching bodies to lift or impede the weight. Figures are composed of mismatched proportions, hewn at the joints with fragile red lines.  Identity is obscured in thickets of opaque dark masses.  In the vague expressive dust of soot and pigment rests forms uneasy in their shape, ungainly and uncomfortable.  They are dark and emotional, sentimental even and sometimes wretched in their form.  They pay homage to the truth but only fleetingly and uneven.  In the spaces between truth and visual chaos, they are beautiful and grotesque.   

The blue washes over them, or suspends them in time.  They sit, they yell in puddles of pink, wade through streams of viscous red, and troweled on blacks and brown.  Trapped in vague spaces of strokes and marks they reach, wobble and try to stand. 

Close Information
Close Information
Grouping of 44 x 30 drawings installed.
Grouping of 44 x 30 drawings installed.
Cradled, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Cradled, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Pressure #2, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Pressure #2, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Bound, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 44 x 30
Bound, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 44 x 30
Pressure, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Pressure, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Compression, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Compression, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Convulsive Motion, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions 30 x 44
Convulsive Motion, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions 30 x 44
Conveyance, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Conveyance, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Dangle, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Dangle, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Impetus, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Impetus, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Crossed Legs, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Crossed Legs, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Emaciated, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Emaciated, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Mysterious Fears, Charcoal and Pastel on Rives BFK, 30 x 44
Mysterious Fears, Charcoal and Pastel on Rives BFK, 30 x 44
Strain, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Strain, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Reaching, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Reaching, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Wretched, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Wretched, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Plunge II, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Plunge II, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 44
Convulsive Motion II, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Edition 30 x 44
Convulsive Motion II, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Edition 30 x 44
Slab, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 22
Slab, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 30 x 22
Prop, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 22 x 30
Prop, Charcoal and Pastel on Canson Editions, 22 x 30
Grouping of 22 x 30 drawings installed.
Grouping of 22 x 30 drawings installed.
Seated Woman, II, Oil on Canvas 28 x 34
Seated Woman, II, Oil on Canvas 28 x 34
Compression, Oil on Canvas, 26 x 36
Compression, Oil on Canvas, 26 x 36
Seated Woman I, Oil on Canvas 28 x 40
Seated Woman I, Oil on Canvas 28 x 40
Conflagration, Oil on Canvas, 28 x 30
Conflagration, Oil on Canvas, 28 x 30
One They Would Like, Oil on Canvas,  48 x 72
One They Would Like, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 72
Outrage, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40
Outrage, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40
Tribalism, Oil on Canvas,  36 x 60
Tribalism, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 60
Deplorables, Oil on Canvas 72 x 72
Deplorables, Oil on Canvas 72 x 72
Ischemic #1, Oil on Canvas,  40 x 40
Ischemic #1, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40
Rally, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 72
Rally, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 72
Rally and Deplorables installed.
Rally and Deplorables installed.
Planted, Oil on Canvas,  48 x 60
Planted, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 60
Ischemic #2, Oil on Canvas,  48 x 60
Ischemic #2, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 60
Segmented, Oil on Canvas,  36 x 60
Segmented, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 60
Ischemic #3, Oil on Canvas,  48 x 60
Ischemic #3, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 60