ARTIST BIO

Michael Knutson received a BFA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art.  He is a Professor of Art at Reed College.  He has received an Artist Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Betty Bowen Special Recognition Award, Juror Awards in two Portland Art Museum Biannuals, and an award at an Invitational Exhibit of the American Academy of Arts & Letters in New York.  He is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and is a member of Blackfish Gallery in Portland.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My interest in abstraction and geometric forms took hold in graduate school. I had come to feel that my representational work was indebted to too many artists from the past and present, and that perhaps there were more possibilities to find my own way in abstraction. Forty-five years later, I am still at it, although my work has continued to converse with art from the past and present and from different cultures and forms, such as Amish and Gee’s Bend patchwork quilts, Navajo weavings and Islamic carpets.

Inverting Ovoid Fields #2, 2018.  I am drawn to spirals because they are gestural and asymmetrical, and they have been the armature of my compositions for over twenty years. Ovals have been my primary form since 2010. I begin by drawing an expanding spiral on paper, mapping over it with a triangular lattice, setting an irregular oval into each triangle, and then erasing the spiral and triangles. This leaves a field of tumbling and expanding ovals. I scan the drawing into Photoshop, create three duplicate layers, flip them into different orientations and merge them onto the original layer. The result is a symmetrical tangle of ovoids. I then adjust the size and proportion of the image and print it onto paper or canvas.  In my paintings over the past four years I have divided the compositions with a single “X”, as in IOF #2, or multiple “Xs”.  This both anchors the composition to the corners and edges of the frame, and creates different triangular zones.

The watercolors are composed of four transparent colors, a different color on each layer, and when the layer crosses from one zone to another the color shifts from the positive forms (the ovals) to the negative spaces. In the completed work, each zone has two layers of colored ovals and two layers of colored negative spaces. Although the design is symmetrical, the resulting color composition is asymmetrical. The layering of the shapes in Inverting Ovoid Fields #2  creates fifteen colors.