http://johnfirestone.com/blog Quinacridone, Pthalo, Interference, Iridescent, Transparent, and Gold Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:52:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 http://johnfirestone.com/blog/2006/07/03/sam-gilliam/ http://johnfirestone.com/blog/2006/07/03/sam-gilliam/#comments Mon, 03 Jul 2006 00:04:29 +0000 quinacridone http://johnfirestone.com/blog/2006/07/03/sam-gilliam/ About 6 years or so ago I was a youngish student at Murray State University. Sam Gilliam was a visiting artist giving a lecture about his work. I don’t know how Murray state got him but it was well worth it. Before his lecture I was talking with another professors who confessed to hating Gilliam’s work, since I looked up to this professor I made up my mind not to like him either. Sam is a tall man with a very easy and hypnotic voice, he is also very smart – which promptly made me fall asleep near the front row during one of his lectures.
I was awoken to the sound of a man saying “It moves.” Sam was talking about one of his paintings. “It moves.” A painting moves! When I woke up and heard that I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, if I did fall asleep or if I was just not thinking in his direction until that point. That one saying changed my life. Ever since that time I have not been able to stop thinking about him and his work. Moving paintings? I always thought paintings were supposed to sit in a box on the wall and look like a photograph.
I didn’t realize how wrong I was. This guy opened so many doors for me that my own thick headedness kept shut. I have been looking at his work ever since, trying to copy everything I can, learning from every work that I see. Recently I went to the Corcoran to see the Sam Gilliam retrospective. I was quite blown away by it and also very surprised at all the new things I learned by seeing his paintings in person. There are some of his works I don’t really care for like the black paintings although I have already learned a tremendous amount from them – but they don’t really mesh with me. But the draped paintings, the poured paintings, the Slat paintings (!) especially those Slats. If you have never seen one in person you just won’t get it. I am planning on writing every so often on a few different artists. Sam is going to be one of them. This is just my short little introduction. Sam Gilliam has a silly sort of profundity that I need to explore more. And those Slat paintings have haunted me for months now!

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