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| Southernaire 2, 2011, Oil on canvas with carved wooden pediment and mixed media predella. |
When Mark Messersmith first moved to Tallahassee, Florida in
the mid-1980s, he was immediately struck by the wildness of the surrounding
landscape, a wildness gone from much of America. In Mark Messersmith: Maximalist
and Naturalist, he continues his exploration of the tension between this
wild, living place and ever-increasing human expansion. Drawing on inspirations ranging from the
Pre-Raphaelites, Martin Johnson Heade, Southern folk art and medieval
manuscripts, the paintings of Messersmith are dense, radiant, and sculptural
depictions of the flora and fauna of northern Florida struggling to survive.
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| Installation shot of Mark Messersmith: Maximalist and Naturalist at the Ogden Museum |
With his large sculptural canvases, Messersmith creates a
narrative where animals, insects and plants are in constant struggle – often
with the natural cycles of life and the food chain, but more noticeably against
the onslaught of human expansion. In this drama, the domesticated dog often
represents the destructive nature of man. Logging trucks filled with fresh
timber are as common in his surfaces as they are on the back roads of the rural
South.
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| Edge of Town, 2009, Oil on canvas with carved wooden pediment and mixed
media predella
|
These canvases are embellished with carved pediments
inspired by medieval manuscripts that act to highlight the theme of the
narrative. Along the bottom of each canvas, a series of predellas in the
tradition of medieval altar pieces serve to expand the narrative. Yet each of
these works, like all of Messersmith’s paintings, deals more with light and
color than narrative.
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| From a Dark Twilight, 2012, Oil on canvas with carved wooden pediment and mixed
media predella.
|
Going out regularly into the wetlands and marshes south of
Tallahassee, Messersmith documents natural performances – the changing light of
a day passing in the wild – with his lushly-colored plein air landscapes. This
obsession with light and the passage of time is carried into a series of
totems. The six wooden totems in his most recent body of work depict the
passing of a single day, from dawn till dusk.
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|
They Fight, They
Fail (Six Hours of a Long Day) 1-3
2011
Oil
and mixed media on pine |
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|
They Fight, They
Fail (Six Hours of a Long Day) 4-6
2011 Oil
and mixed media on pine
|
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| Installation shot of Mark Messersmith: Maximalist and Naturalist at the Ogden Museum |
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| Vespertine Sacrifice, 2006, Oil on canvas with carved wooden pediment and mixed media predella |
Mark Messersmith: Maximalist and Naturalist opened on April 19th, 2012 on the fourth floor of the Ogden Museum's Goldring Hall, and continues through July 23rd.
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| Installation shot of Mark Messersmith: Maximalist and Naturalist at the Ogden Museum. |
Mark Messersmith is Professor of Art at Florida State
University, where he has taught since 1985. He received an MFA from Indiana
University, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Ford
Fellowship, four Individual Artist Fellowship Awards from the Florida
Department of State, and a 2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting Award.
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| Wild as Angels, 2012, Oil on canvas with carved wooden pediment and mixed media predella |
1 comment:
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