Remains: Recent Work by Austin Cartwright

The abstract paintings of contemporary artist Austin Cartwright, whose textured surfaces explore the various properties of paint, demonstrate the artist’s choice to preserve moments of beauty that occur in conflict with elements of life and humanity. Cartwright employs a process of painting in which the materials are layered and scraped, and then layered and scraped.  In the act of application and removal, the painting creates a history of itself through Cartwright’s artistic decisions.

August 10: ArtScene with Austin Cartwright 
6:30pm / Free – Members, $5 – Guests

Learn about Cartwright’s exhibit at FWMoA – his first – from the artist himself. The abstract paintings of contemporary artist Austin Cartwright, whose textured surfaces explore the various properties of paint, demonstrate the artist’s choice to preserve moments of beauty that occur in conflict with elements of life and humanity. Cartwright employs a process of painting in which the materials are layered and scraped, and then layered and scraped.  In the act of application and removal, the painting creates a history of itself through Cartwright’s artistic decisions.

ArtScene is a dynamic program featuring living artists and curators discussing their work in contemporary life through diverse topics such as motivations, struggles, influences, life experiences, and artistic inspirations.

Austin Cartwright Artist’s Statement:

All art shares the same unique ability to freely express and completely capture purpose.  It is its own purpose, with little to no effort.  This quality in art opens the artist’s possibilities to an infinite range.  This universality that art intrinsically possesses can create complex and layered meaning, or it can create a very literal and a surface level interpretation.  The one common thread in all mediums is whether the intention of the artist is known or not, there is a sense of preservation that cannot be destroyed.  In photography it is the moment.  In sculpture it is the form.  Drawing and painting preserve the light and color.  Installation art preserves the object and spatial components.  Performance preserves the expression.

The choice that an artist has is: what to preserve?  I choose the moments of beauty that fight with the contrasting parts of living and humanity.  Without being conscious of it, I have always been preserving memories and experiences through light, color, form, and space.  There has been an obsession with geometry and structure that can only be explained by looking at the world around us.  Space is filled with void until it is bent, pushed, pulled, or replaced by objects.  This constant fluctuation becomes apparent in my paintings as the void is split and reconstructed into a space that preserves and mimics moments from life and memory.

My process of creating is analogous to the human body and its ability to endure transformation, destruction, and to ultimately heal.  Paint is layered and scraped, and then layered and scraped.  In the act of application and removal, the painting creates a history of itself through my decisions.  The body acts in a similar way with its own scarring and healing process.  As a painting grows and an identity is achieved, the painting gains a voice.  I, as the artist, listen.  In this, there becomes a relationship built between the artist and the body of art. This relationship grows and becomes a physical body of its own, that can stand and speak on its own.