Right now, I am supposed to be writing tomorrow’s lecture (topic ‘information structures’..), but I stumbled way off-topic, when I came a slide of painter/ photographer Sean Scully. His works have striking resemblance to some of the best contemporary quilt making, dealing with similar issues of geometric visual constructions and harmony.
Brown University held a retrospective of Scully’s work and wrote:

“Scully’s work derived from the traditions of European early modernism (Mondrian and Matisse), in its ideals for harmony and spirituality, and American late modernism (Pollock and Rothko), in its urge for large, open-ended compositions, expressing personal inner states. How to reconcile European order with American vigor—or more specifically, how to combine Mondrian’s plastic clarity with Matisse’s sensuousness, Pollock’s drips, and Rothko’s fluidity—has remained the basic question of Scully’s art practice to which he gave slightly different answers throughout the years.”

Scully moves back and forth from photography to painting and back again:

“In Harris and Louis Shacks, a portfolio of twelve photographs, this process of transformation followed a different path, going from recognizable objects to subjective impressions of them. Although taken as snapshots of facades, windows, and doors in Scotland, these photographs are not straightforward recordings of architectural elements. By depicting fading walls, cracked surfaces, rough edges, and the deep shadows created by them, these images capture beauty in decay, and evoke the basic contradiction of nature and life: solidity and fragility, timelessness and change. In this way, as metaphors of physical and mental conditions, the photographs correspond to the abstract configuration of his paintings. While the former are tracing visible reality, the latter are capturing the memories, feelings, and thoughts connected to the experience of that reality. Nevertheless, looking at the photographs and paintings side by side only re-confirms the intricate relationship of material and immaterial, and physical and mental, aspects of life. It is precisely this continuing interchange of the recognizable and abstract worlds, the visible and the invisible, that empowers Scully’s works in all media, pointing to the horizon of their merging.”

This past winter, the Metropolitan Museum offered an exhibition, Sean Scully: Wall of Light, which explored variations on a theme.

“Inspired by the artist’s first visits to Mexico in the early 1980s, where he observed the play of light and shadow on ancient stone walls, this ongoing and distinctive body of work focuses on an exploration of abstract forms affected by light, evoking a range of emotional and narrative themes. Paintings from 1998 to the present are constructed with rectangular bricklike forms, closely fitted and arranged in horizontal and vertical groupings as if in a wall, and characterized by broad, gestural brushstrokes, a wide range of luminous colors built up in layers, and varying degrees of overall light and darkness.”

On my computer, I can admire Scully’s abstraction and composition. I can flick back and forth between Scully’s work the quilts of the Gees Bend. I can listen to Scully talk about his creation process (RealPlayer: 9:04 minutes) and points of inspiration. Still, I wish that I could see the works in person. Reportedly, the layering of paint and luminance of these layers create an effect that can’t be appreciated on the web.