The Extremely Handsome Plein-Air Extreme Team
For the last three years I have been working with a collaborator (Eric Ashcraft) on a project that involves Plein-Air painting in problematic or abject circumstances. Examples of this practice range from painting in Lake Michigan (twenty yards off the shore) to painting on the side of an abandoned building. The work itself then, includes a performative element that blurs the lines between the disciplines of painting and performance; two genres of art that have sadly been seen by some critics as diametrically opposed. The relevance of this project is not merely in an exploration of the above mentioned medias, but is also an attempt to generate artwork within an hyper-experiential framework, where the circumstances surrounding the art product are as important as the product itself.
