The paintings of American artist Maxwell Dunlop (1983 – 2023) are an investigation. One layer is the paint itself. What happens when colors mix together or transparent glazes are layered on top of each other? The next layer is observation. How does light reflect off of different surfaces? What are the structural elements of the shadows in a space? How do different viewpoints affect the perspective and feeling of an image? The paintings were built up slowly, looking, thinking and constantly making changes. They are a mixture of personal experience, art history, human history and physical properties of paint itself.
The paint drips and slides across the surface enforcing the flatness of the picture plane while simultaneously creating an illusion of space. These works exist in the realm where abstraction, representation, the past and the present all vibrate against each other and viewer is left to make decisions about what they see. They must engage and assemble the image in their mind, an interaction with the marks becomes an interaction with the subject matter.
