William Elliott Whitmore speaks my language.

"I live on a farm... in Lee County, Iowa... and this song is about dirt."

new painting, new drawing, ready for the show

i finally finished up the latest painting. finally? yes; it completely kicked my ass. i took an opportunity to try and re-shoot the new drawing too, and the new pics came out a little better. those drawings are terribly difficult to shoot. here you go:



















josephine (four)
2010
pencil, colored pencil on paper
32 x 20 inches
© matt pulford



















Amelia and Dandelion
2010
acrylic on canvas
46 x 34 inches
© matt pulford

m i d d l e s t a t e s

i just received an email from an artist friend that i have been curated into a group exhibition that will run during the first months of 2011. the show is called m i d d l e s t a t e s and is at Drake University's Anderson Gallery. here is the PDF of the exhibition, divided up into two jpgs for you (click on images to see a larger view).

Amelia and Chloe

this past weekend, the village of east davenport had an event where all the small business owners kept their shops open late for a shin-dig that included santa, reindeer, carolers, free food samples, hot chocolate, fire pits, and artists working on their work in storefront windows. it sounds campy, but it was actually quite fun. steve banks and i were hosted by the Village Corner Deli. we each had a 5-hour stint in "the studio" (rare these days) and they hooked us up with a very delicious dinner for taking residence with them for the night. a win-win situation. during the night, i finished up the painting i've been working on, as well as another one of the Josephine drawings. the drawing is incredibly difficult to photograph, so i've given up on putting it on the site. however, here's the finished painting:


http://www.mattpulford.com/amelia_and_chloe.html
















Amelia and Chloe
2009
acrylic on canvas
46 x 34 inches
© matt pulford





































by the way, if you have the time, go see Marta Currier's show at the Catich Gallery (at Saint Ambrose University). steve and i left our post for a quick moment and checked it out; it's very good.

http://www.sau.edu/x2696.xml

a little further along...

the large canvas is moving along decently well:

































the small paintings on paper are slower:


















i recently received an order of that 20 x 32 inch drawing paper i love, so there will be more "josephine" drawings soon
here are some from the earlier lot:
http://www.mattpulford.com/josephine_1.html
http://www.mattpulford.com/josephine_3.html
i've already started working on one, and it's a lot more dense, and kind of "wind-blown."

solo show next spring

i recently received word that i will be having a solo show next spring, probably spanning the months of april and may. the gallery is the midcoast space a bucktown — the nice raw-ish, exposed brick gallery on the second floor. i haven't had a solo show in my hometown since my moves around the midwest started back in the late 90s, so this should be very fun. the space is large, and i have decided the show will consist of the pieces from Amelia and Josephine, along with several floor pieces from a few years back, and whatever new work i make between now and then.

and speaking of that, here are some new pieces that i've just barely begun...

Grant App

i've had a nice break from things during the last month and a half, while Amelia and Josephine has been up on view at the MCAC. but now i think it's time to get back to work, and i figure i'll do something i haven't done yet - apply for individual artist grant funding. i used to work on arts programming grants back in the day, for a former employer. that process was more involved than this, so i'm crossing my fingers that i score well and receive funding. i'm expecting the worst and hoping for the best. i should be starting the application within the next month or so.

some other things going on lately...

- i was asked to do some printmaking programming/demonstrations at the Figge Art Museum's Family Day this past weekend. it went very well, and was a ton of fun.
- i was laid off the day before the opening of Amelia and Josephine. it is not going well, and is not a ton of fun.

opening reception at MCAC

last weekend we travelled to bloomington, IL for the opening reception of my show. we were pleasantly surprised at how packed it was. we knew that a combo of my work and Gary Justis' show in the adjacent gallery would bring out the ISU peeps, but there were also an awful lot of visitors who didn't have ties to the university. and to top it all off, the Rev Horton Heat had an outdoor concert right across the street from the arts center, so there was a lot of spillover foot traffic from that too.

here are some images from my show:














































































































































and some images of Gary Justis' installation, Head On: ReDux

studio sale

i recently put up a hidden page on my web site, and it contains old work i have for sale for cheap. there is a lot of studio storage downstairs that is being taken up with old paintings, old framed drawings, and boxes of old works on paper, and i have to make room for new work. if anyone is interested in some inexpensive purchases of work from about 8 to 12 years ago, go here:

http://www.mattpulford.com/studio_sale.html

i'll sign off by placing a random assortment of images from the page...

the fall lineup

after about 10 months of on and off time in the studio, i have finally finished all of the work for my upcoming solo show. as usual, i'm feeling here and there with these new pieces — i'm quite pleased with some, yet still questioning things with others. but it is what it is - a grouping of paintings, drawings, and prints that i made because... well... because i make art. here are the details for the show:

Amelia and Josephine
Recent work by Matt Pulford

August 21 - October 10, 2009
Armstrong Gallery @ The McLean County Arts Center
Bloomington, IL


my usual short and to the point artist's statement will be posted:

There is not a more dominant force behind my work than the open prairie of the Midwestern landscape. It has become an aggrandized mother figure of sorts, a place whose calmness and emptiness is a welcome escape from the everyday. My yearning for this solitude manifests itself in two distinct bodies of work — serene, minimal reflections on the landscape itself, and darker explorations tied to the longing for it.



but a more in-depth explanation will accompany the work via a printed hand out:

This past fall, my wife and I became parents of our first child – a beautiful little girl named Amelia Blue. During the first few months of our lives together, I'd watch her dream as she'd take many mini-naps throughout the day. There would be rapid movement beneath her eyelids, she'd give a little kick here and there, and I would smile as I'd wonder what such a young child could possibly be visualizing in her mind's eye. It wasn't long until doodles of mine began to incorporate fragments of Amelia's quilted blankets — a signifier of her tranquility, comfort, and contentment. As spring awoke from a long winter, these little sketches developed into large paintings that were unlike my minimal landscape works. The bright colors of our flower garden and my peculiar fondness of the rabbits in our backyard (the latter heightened by my re-reading of Watership Down for the nth time) started to make their way into thoughts on new pieces to create. I was in full fantastical, whimsical art-making mode — a place where I imagined my daughter dreaming of flying around on her magic blanket with the neighborhood rabbits as her copilots, laughing it up as they explored the sky.

It was during this same time of birth and growth that my paternal grandmother Josephine's health began to slip away. Out of all my grandparents, Josephine is the one who woke me up and fed me before school, watched me after school, and cared for me when I stayed home sick. She is dear to me, and watching her liveliness fade has been heartbreaking. If the emotions related to Amelia's first months are simple and direct in that they are forever tied to the verdancy of Spring, thoughts related to my grandmother's impending passing are more complex, for they traverse back and forth from warm remembrances of cherry tree blossoms falling to the ground, to the dark days of a bleak, desolate winterscape where nothing grows.




here you go - all the work that will hang on the walls:





















Kehaar
2009
acrylic on canvas
27 x 27 inches



























Pipkin
2009
acrylic paint & relief print on paper
30 x 22 inches



























Amelia and Fiver
2008
acrylic on canvas
20 x 20 inches



























Amelia and Hrair-roo
2009
acrylic on canvas
48 x 30 inches


























josephine (three)
2008
pencil, colored pencil on paper
32 x 20 inches


























bedding
2008
pencil, colored pencil on paper
24 x 16 inches


























hyzenthlay
2008
oil on canvas
44 x 44 inches



























chloe
2008
oil on canvas
36 x 36 inches



























josephine (one)
2008
pencil, colored pencil on paper
32 x 20 inches


























josephine (two)
2008
pencil, colored pencil on paper
32 x 20 inches



























gold staying (1)
2007
oil on canvas
36 x 36 inches






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