Art Sync: The Infinite in All Things

EJ: ...Do you work up a drawing and then transfer it to canvas? Or do you transfer loose pencil drawings onto canvas, developing and sharpening them there? Do you add paint after the form is determined, or as it is?

BP: I’m a compulsive drawer. I keep sketchbooks where I draw and develop the motifs used in my paintings. When a drawing arouses my interest, I redraw it on the canvas. From here, my painting method is traditional, first roughing in values, selecting and adding color and developing form. It is a very intuitive process, and the paintings go through many revisions before they are complete.

EJ: I imagine you love M. C. Escher, who worked before the age of computers and computer-aided design software. Do you ever build on his ideas? Do you use Photoshop or other computer programs to help you start drawings?

BP: M.C. Escher was a keen observer of nature and an amazing draftsman. Like Escher, my practice developed before the availability of computers and computer-aided software. One way that computers have effectively changed the way I see is their ability to make instant shifts in scale and point of view. As you look at the paintings in the show you see that there are disorienting changes in scale throughout.

EJ: Has climate change affected your work in specific ways? When you speak of the relationship between art and nature, do you consider art inherently unnatural but versed in mimicking nature? Thinking about all the correct and incorrect observations that humans have made of nature over centuries, do you feel it is temporary or illusory that we get closer to it?

BP: I am trying to envision the non-physical or spiritual part of nature. The forces and forms that are the motivation of growth and are hidden from view. A vision of nature that is expanded to embrace micro and macrocosmic points of view. A common notion is that nature is without spirit, that it is separate from us and only here for our use. I see this as an incorrect view. The crises we are facing such as climate change will only bring us closer to this realization. We will either come to see this or destroy ourselves.

EJ: Can you expand on the shift between detailed Realism and using symbols or patterns in your work? It is quite a jump. In each series it seems like one or the other will dominate. Are you motivated by a perceived gap between the patterns of nature and what you observe?

BP: A “cosmic fractal language” is a good way of putting it. It is fascinating how fundamental geometric forms can be scaled and combined into new forms. Fractal geometry is a new geometry that expanded our knowledge of nature. Where once we saw chaos fractal theory has shown that there is order. There are many levels of organization in nature, symmetry, for example, is widely used in my new work.

EJ: The Cipher series is broad-ranging. You unify phenomena such as moon craters, cracked paint, leaf veins, and wave shadows by focusing on the fact that they are random––but patterned––aftereffects. (Cracking Cipher is especially beautiful.) Do these phenomena involve fractals? Or are you thinking here about how energy and matter always find the path of least resistance or maximum efficiency?

BP: For the Cipher paintings I set out to paint images of familiar fractal patterns. The Crack Cipher painting is taken from the cracking in the glaze of a ceramic bowl. Translating the drawing to canvas I was confounded trying to anticipate the patterns’ irregularities. The geometry of the pattern is highly organized and yet uniquely irregular...

BP: The Caracol paintings unite upward spiraling growth with the spiral of the expanding earth plane. This image appeared to me in meditation. Many of my motifs express a metaphysical reality that comes about through my yoga and meditation practices.

EJ: Inspiration from meditation and yoga makes a lot of sense to me. Does the color come with the image? I wonder because some of your pieces are unified by a specific hot or cold color.

BP: Color reinforces reference to something real like the sky or a leaf. I use a lot of blue. Blue is spacious and ethereal. Red is the opposite: it concentrates and focuses. Color also affects the overall space and atmosphere of a painting.

EJ: Recent works such as Branching 2 and Folium 1 are three-dimensional yet leverage subtle modulations of color and light, compared to, for instance, the Fractal Forest series that showcases drawing.

Is this a new trend?

Bruce Pollock is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. He has exhibited widely including solo shows at the Shenzhen Art Museum in Shenzen, P.R. China; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; and other public and private institutions across the country. His work has been acquired by the The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, the Woodmere Art Museum, Cigna Corporation, Comcast and many others. His work has been featured and reviewed by many magazines, newspapers and art publications. He is the recipient of many grants and awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony Fellowship. Bruce Pollock lives and works in Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore.