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Frank Balaam
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ARTIST STATEMENT
Fire: "I began plein air painting the Light Through the Trees series as the Rodeo and Chedeski fires of 2002 merged and threatened my campsite. The forest's stoic acceptance of all-consuming fire has become a model for me since my art and gallery were destroyed in the Pioneer Hotel fire of 2005. My hope is that after seemingly total destruction, the forest and I will renew ourselves through creativity."
Viewpoint: " An impenetrable tangle of trees, no earth, no distance, no forest creatures and no visible path in or out. The solitary viewer is part of the timeless forest, rooted and growing inexorably."
Reverse Painting: " I have adopted a reverse painting technique which allows the light to have substance instead of being merely a scenic backdrop, or solely an illuminator of the "subject" of the painting. First, I paint the immediate foreground then I progress through mid-ground and finally onto the distant pure light bursting through leaves and branches as the last brushstrokes are applied. One of the effects of the last touches being thick dabs of colour, is that they distort the edges of leaves and branches as if the light has phycially muscled its way onto the foreground, scuffing off colour as it passes through the dense growth of the forest."
Chaos and Order: "These paintings expanded upon an observer's view of a treescape and became a personal experience. The forest is still there from a distance, and there seems surely to be a path appearing as we draw close, yet the nearer we get the more passionate the tangle of colour and the more unrecognisable the forms which once were foliage, until gradaully abstraction and chaos restore the primal swirl of pure existence."
Colour: "I like the passion of oil paint, the surface, the thick brushstrokes loaded with pigment, the flamboyant interaction of colour, and I like it all to coalesce into an identifiable whole allowing the viewer to inhabit both journey and destination with barely a fractional alteration in perception."
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