July 28 - August 20, 2017
Clive & Virginia Pates – "Oil and Dirt"
New paintings and ceramics
Main Gallery
Opening Reception for the Artists
Friday, July 28, 2017
7:00-10:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Closing Artist Talk
Sunday, August 20, 2017
2:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public
OIL AND DIRT Artists' Statements
Clive and Virginia Pates create paintings and ceramics that relate on many levels, such as the source material of a common landscape and a richness of color and abstract form. Clive Pates' paintings are a plein air record of the couple's life and travels, and Virginia Pates' ceramics are constructed of the materials that created these landscapes.
Clive and Virginia Pates
Clive and Virginia Pates
These works are a window into the creative journeys of two artists who have a shared, intimate
understanding of each other’s artistic processes and life experiences. An intimate dialog is
evident between their works, and the viewer discerns a reciprocal, subtle conversation.
The sustained creative growth exhibited in each artist's body of work is the reward of such a
unique partnership. Although the works are formally, vastly different, there is a continuous
thread of gesture, materiality, and evidence of a shared truth.
These works follow the artists' experience over the decade from Hurricane Katrina and the
storm's aftermath in Biloxi, Mississippi, through their artistic recovery traveling and working in
Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Arizona and Virginia, describing the landscape of light and emotion from
which both artists work.
Clive Pates
As a painter, Clive Pates describes himself as a "gesturalist," representing his subject with
brush and knife work, sculpturally describing the picture surface with a broad and open
mark making process. The paintings are worked over many painting sessions in an
extended plein-air format, each work is referenced within a few moments of time. A
change in a shadow or colour changes the dynamic of the picture composition, and
paintings develop as serial expression of the scene before him. New works are started from
the same composition, but the nuance of the light changes, allowing each new work to
represent a single point, usually a 15-minute space of time, within the day's cycle.
Worked from life, and rigorous in their depiction of a perceptual reality, the paintings
remain detail-less, open and abstract. The paintings are about a process and way of
working, but also move beyond process and analysis, and look afresh at a forgotten act of
looking. Older concepts of the sublime reference an emotional dialog between knower and
known: a meeting point between a positivist universe and a new humanism that seeks
again to explore a deeper humanity in art.
Clive Pates' paintings are exhibited internationally, and he has been recognized throughout
his career with awards such as a British Fulbright Scholarship, three Elizabeth
Greenshields Foundation grants, two Andy Warhol Foundation Grants, and a Mississippi
Artist Fellowship, as well as professional residencies in Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Arizona.
His work is represented in many private and public collections.
More at CWPates.com
Virginia Pates
Virginia Pates is a contemporary American ceramic artist who creates wheel-thrown and
altered forms in a wide variety of clay bodies, often including collected materials from the
local environment. Her forms are weighted and re-balanced by inclusions of minerals and
fibers, then scalloped and warped before firing with glazes of unexpected combinations of
colors and textures.
Virginia Pates also exhibits her work internationally, and has won multiple awards in her
field, including grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Mississippi Arts
Commission, residencies in Arizona and Ireland, and a juried membership in the Artisans
Center of Virginia, and selections of her ceramic glaze recipes are published in John Britt's,
The Complete Guide to Mid-Range Glazes. Her ceramic work was selected for the 2012
International Academy of Ceramics Exhibition, the 2013 Virginia Clay Invitational, and the
2015 NCECA Biennial. and she is currently represented by the Cross-Mackenzie Gallery in
Washington, D.C.
More at virginiapates.blogspot.com
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