artist statement:

In this recent body of paintings the images get their start in the pages of my photo albums, from recent photos of my family, to snapshots from my youth. These photographic fragments of my life, through my process and imagination, have turned into a collection of paintings that tell a story of an alternative reality. These paintings are highly personal to me, though my hope is to depict a human story that is universal.

To express complex narratives through paint can be very frustrating, especially when we are inundated with books, films and songs that do it so vividly.  As a young painter living in a time of MTV and Steven Spielberg, this frustrated me to the point of giving it up.  After many years I have returned to painting and it’s now more alive and exciting for me than it ever was. I now believe that there are some things that can be communicated most powerfully through paint. Like a faint smell can trigger intense memory - vague in specifics but enormously powerful in feeling and emotion. It is like this that we communicate through paint.

about the artist:

This is the first showing of a body of work that Chris White started in 2006 after a 10-year hiatus from painting. Born in the Midwest, Chris got his MFA from The University of Pennsylvania in 1997. After grad school Chris quit painting for a number reasons. During that time he was, among other things, a candle-maker and a record label executive. He sailed extensively in the Atlantic – at one point being rescued off a sinking sailboat in the Bermuda Triangle. Chris now lives in Bellevue Washington with his wife and two sons.

tie-dye - oil on canvas, 36 " x 48 "