Each Jostling each along the bank - Kipling
Found object in the garden
Poet take my measure now
(Inferno of Dante, Canto II)
Exhibition January 25 - February 26, 2011 Togonon Gallery, 77 Geary Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco CA 94108
11-5.30 pm Tuesday to Saturday (til 7:30 pm first Thursday of Month)
Lora Groves, Recent Paintings
Solo Exhibition
Togonon Gallery is very pleased to introduce the work of Lora Groves. This exhibition includes examples from three bodies of work: paintings on fabric, paintings on concrete board and drawings.
Groves creates mixed media paintings from over a decade of creative explorations. Most notably, she has exhaustively examined her relationship to the natural world around her even to go as far as allowing nature to collaborate with her by leaving their marks on her work. Groves describes the place where she creates: “Though my working place shifts psychologically from piece to piece, most of my work is made in my studio on the South Coast of Northern California, about an hour south of San Francisco. I have access to an exceptional coastline, but live in a redwood rainforest five miles inland. Place figures into the work tremendously because it always has. Place exterior becomes place interior in the work”.
While nature is key to her creative process, Groves is equally interested in exploring the technical aspect of her work. Having utilized photography and practiced figurative painting, Groves’ current work is an exploration of abstract painting, sharp lines and organic forms on a variety of surfaces. Most of her early works are on linen fabric, finished with sewn edges, and hangs tapestry-style. In these pieces she combines thick gestured paint strokes with beads, buttons, and other items to create colorful and evocative textural landscapes.
Her newest work is acrylic on concrete board. Groves explains the path of her newest work, “In it I explore the archive of qualities available with a sturdier surface. My own riffs on miniature painting, direct study of my surroundings, and progress toward the fantastical that results from the daily sensory mix emerge in this work.” Groves also continues to explore organic and gesture forms through her work on paper.
Groves received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and garnered a residency at the Morris Graves Foundation in the summer of 2010. Her work has been exhibited throughout California and in galleries nationwide.
Artist Statement
In Taoist thought the way that can be described is not the true way; painting has a purpose that supersedes most description. In the same sense I stumble every time I try to explain my reasons for painting. Physically it is about accident and intention, where material and I play. The content is buried in the history and the history is the time it takes to make the work and the following time it takes anyone to look at the work. I shape color with water, mindful of that element, and in turn shape my mind with an idea of sharing care and respect for this world-garden. That is the content—the world garden. I am involved in it explicitly. So some of the work is landscape-oriented, some is portrait-oriented but about similar topics. In order to understand why I bring this work to you, please look carefully and tread softly on the planet.
Lora Groves, 2011
