Chapters
by Daniel Stuelpnagel
Chapter Ten
untitled # 245 (2003)So much of the time I had lived in Sacramento I had spent driving back and forth to San Francisco, so I wanted to actually live in SF and be back in the midst of that vibrant culture.
Most of my opportunities, exhibitions, and connections in the city I found through craigslist.
So that was still the major resource for finding whatever you needed there. After pounding the pavement for a week or so looking at places, I decided on a group house of artists living in the Mission, very close to where I had by chance dropped off my Burning Man rider three years earlier.
There was shared studio space in the garage, and my housemates included a film student from back east, a dancer from Bolivia, an electronic music aficionado from southern California and an industrial design student from Montana.
untitled # 250 (2004)
collection of Mary Carol Phillips (Baltimore)This remarkable painting was in some way the culmination of a series of seascapes spanning more than ten years (I had done the first one while studying at MICA in the early 90’s).
The three-to-one compositional ratio enabling a panoramic view, the austere yet vibrant colors, leaning perhaps towards the hyper-saturated palette of digital influence which would later predominate, and the overall sense of completion and elegant minimalism; the slightly curved horizon, the subtle use of texture, and that fascinating ability to walk the line between photo-realism and abstraction, all of the elements conspired to make this particular seascape successful.
untitled # 252 (2004)
private collection (Sacramento)Any approach to completion, then, requires an immediate and significant departure. Hence a few vertical compositions to experiment with additional possibilities, the conclusion being that the window is open, that each boundary and silhouette gives us a different look at that world, and the myriad possibilities are so prolific that there is no need for completion or conquest, there are simply limitless opportunities to make good.
untitled # 253 (2004)
collection of Donna Hovermill (Hagerstown)After a sufficient experience of travel, I evidently had enough visual information captured that I felt replete, and to some degree, exhausted.
I could continue with different permutations of the fundamental composition that I had stayed close to for several years, but there was also another equally intricate set of images attempting to download through my work process.
And despite being fairly prolific, I often felt that, if I could just settle some fundamental issues, like maybe where to live and how to find some peace with the many challenges I was facing, it would be possible for me to advance and be even more steadily productive in fulfilling my mission.
During my year living in the Mission in San Francisco, I exhibited with and was influenced by a diverse group of Spanish-speaking artists; the visceral aesthetic of organic forms, bright colors and musical rhythms were bringing additional layers to my future.
In late 2004, I returned to Baltimore to begin work on my first corporate collection, and started a new series of geometric abstractions, which felt like they had been on the back burner for a while.
And I also worked out the “landscape” which precedes Chapter One, bringing together all of the elements in my work, two years after Norman Parish had suggested that these parallel paths might converge in the studio.
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