Fred Gutzeit BIO_STATEMENT_3-14-21

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My most recent painting has developed from transparent watercolor.  My work here starts with someone signing their name–from that I create a line design.  I transfer that to watercolor paper,  then wet the whole sheet and drop in watercolor for spontaneity.  I carefully paint the line and play that control against the spontaneity.  I make marks and shapes to make your eyes dance around the painting. The edges are painted as counter-point.  The physics of watercolor pigment interacting with the paper is “nature” and handwriting is “form for me: “Sig-Nature.” 

In 2010, I wanted to bring a human element back into my painting.  My simplest idea was to represent consciousness against a background of nature.  Sense of identity, I feel, is an aspect of consciousness.  The trace of Identity that I decided to use is handwriting.  I see how we write our names as a “trace of being.”  In 2010, I used my handwritten initials, then I created a design project where students at City College used their own initials as the motif for a design.  Ultimately for several years of work until recently, I used a dozen initials from art world friends to create almost 100 “Sig-Nature” paintings.  I have more than 70 new SigNatures to work with now and am thinking differently about my latest work: SigNatures—I am beginning to incorporate direct visual reference to the person whose handwriting I am using.  My painting COsig is based on Claes Oldenburg’s initials.  I went to his opening at Paula Cooper Gallery in 2016 and got his SigNature.  I have been a fan of his Pop Art a

Fred Gutzeit BIO_STATEMENT_3-14-21

My most recent painting has developed from transparent watercolor.  My work here starts with someone signing their name–from that I create a line design.  I transfer that to watercolor paper,  then wet the whole sheet and drop in watercolor for spontaneity.  I carefully paint the line and play that control against the spontaneity.  I make marks and shapes to make your eyes dance around the painting. The edges are painted as counter-point.  The physics of watercolor pigment interacting with the paper is “nature” and handwriting is “form for me: “Sig-Nature.” 

In 2010, I wanted to bring a human element back into my painting.  My simplest idea was to represent consciousness against a background of nature.  Sense of identity, I feel, is an aspect of consciousness.  The trace of Identity that I decided to use is handwriting.  I see how we write our names as a “trace of being.”  In 2010, I used my handwritten initials, then I created a design project where students at City College used their own initials as the motif for a design.  Ultimately for several years of work until recently, I used a dozen initials from art world friends to create almost 100 “Sig-Nature” paintings.  I have more than 70 new SigNatures to work with now and am thinking differently about my latest work: SigNatures—I am beginning to incorporate direct visual reference to the person whose handwriting I am using.  My painting COsig is based on Claes Oldenburg’s initials.  I went to his opening at Paula Cooper Gallery in 2016 and got his SigNature.  I have been a fan of his Pop Art and I felt that he had been a role model for me; so my painting is a kind of homage, containing references to his artwork.  With this development I feel that the series is UNFOLDING.  My work has been about finding, understanding, and transformation. 

In my studio on the Bowery in 2001, I did a set of ink drawings to interpret my feelings of Otter Falls, a site in the Catskills. These black and white brush drawings were the beginning of my current patterned work. The feeling of the original site become an "abstract" space that took on a life of it's own. This moves me from depicting landscape to exploring Nature beyond landscape's visual beauty: green is made of yellow and blue; earth–brown is red and black; light is white (in the spectrum, all the colors). My explorations are improvisations based on nature built with the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue –pushed to black and white expressing vibrations and waves as a play on the quantum world of "wave particle duality".  My goal is to play the visual vibrations as a musical composition.

nd I felt that he had been a role model for me; so my painting is a kind of homage, containing references to his artwork.  With this development I feel that the series is UNFOLDING.  My work has been about finding, understanding, and transformation. 

In my studio on the Bowery in 2001, I did a set of ink drawings to interpret my feelings of Otter Falls, a site in the Catskills. These black and white brush drawings were the beginning of my current patterned work. The feeling of the original site become an "abstract" space that took on a life of it's own. This moves me from depicting landscape to exploring Nature beyond landscape's visual beauty: green is made of yellow and blue; earth–brown is red and black; light is white (in the spectrum, all the colors). My explorations are improvisations based on nature built with the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue –pushed to black and white expressing vibrations and waves as a play on the quantum world of "wave particle duality".  My goal is to play the visual vibrations as a musical composition.