Elliott Lloyd, Works of Acrylic and Oil Crayon on Plexiglas in Frames
September 4, 2013
“Every thought…has a trace in work. Nothing covers up anything else….”
(Regarding paintings of 1976—statement of Elliott Lloyd.)
Working in transparencies and drawing within the painting progressed over the years to include this new process of working “in reverse.” The method of working on a clear surface use what the eye does as it processes the series of events of a painting, the painting process revealed.
Looking at screens of many kinds is now a fact of life, whether windows, TV, computers, and so on. In paintings that we know, there is no screen. There is only the surface of the painting with the last strokes laid down, bare to view. Rothko and others played with the show of the previous layers or rejected layers boldly, as in Kline, Stella.
With these new works, we investigate the series of strokes laid down in reverse. In the process of painting. Backward in terms of painting, normal in terms of the way we see. Imagine looking through a window (screen), and the light from each thing reaches your eyes a little at a time, slowed down according to the distance the light travels. Imagine that as the light reaches your eyes, it imprints on the window surface. That is the reverse of the usual painting process, which is what I do.
Elliott Lloyd, Sculpture—Mixed Media
January 5th, 2006
My background is in painting. I’ve been doing sculpture since 1996. My sculpture and the drawings have gone through three stages.
At first, my concern was with the figure as a contained form within a surrounding space. Anatomical continuity, balance, and proportion were paramount. Then that contained form began to integrate with the surrounding space. The figure began to fragment and disintegrate.
The new work is in an advanced stage of disintegration. Color echoes the imagined surroundings. I endeavor to build into the figure a representation of its motivation. For instance, say a dancer leaps into space. The figure ascends, gravity pulls back, and the movement’s emotional reason changes or charges the figure.