New Artist coming next week! Brian McCormick

Madison watercolor artist, Brian McCormick will be exhibiting here beginngin March 11th. "I think of my watercolor landscapes as intimate. They are not of big skies or distant views but reflect the narrow valleys and abrupt hills of the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa: an area untouched by the leveling "drift" of the Ice Age glaciers. My response to the region is a closer focus and more of an emphasis on the flat picture plane instead of perspective. The paintings are also intimate in their focus on the patterns found in the landscapes: the repetition of the forms and color of leaf, flower, stem, branch and tree trunk. My interest in pattern has limited my use of the traditional large areas of watercolor washes-instead I use smaller broken areas of paint that reflect the individual mark of the brush and that create a pattern. I'm drawn to the somber colors and the starker, less appreciated season of late fall when the glory of the brilliant foliage is gone or long past its peak, or winter with its austere color schemes and high contrasts. I work in two formats: square and "triple-square"(one by three units.) I believe these more rigid formats draw more attention to the shape of the painting and help to create a tension between the painting as a referential image and the painting as an object. "