Colombe I

John Zurier

During John Zurier’s initial stint at Aurobora, the artist concerned himself with thin color washes and delicate vertical stripe mark-making to underscore the ambiguous relationship between object and object-maker.  Working only with natural earth pigments, Zurier kept his palette deliberately narrow, and expanded the possibilities of the artist’s mark by using a five-foot bamboo extension to separate his hand from the medium.  Applying the dry pigments directly on a mylar sheets, Zurier was able to develop an image based on subtle color modulation.  Alternating between hesitancy and confidence, the drawn lines define a record of their history.

Unlike his first residency at Aurobora which found the artist concentrating on a drawing exercise, Zurier returned to the studio to focus on exploring his painting hand.  Zurier used the intaglio press to emphasis that his painting emerges from the conditions of its own creation.  In a single pass, Zurier printed directly from his wet plates on both unprimed linen and heavily textured papers that lend his compositions an emotional honesty.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, California; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine; Microsoft Corporation Art Collection, Redmond, Washington; Oakland Museum of California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; University of California, San Francisco at Mission Bay, San Francisco, California; Principia College, Elsah, Illinois