#25 Categorical Landscape Painting

Working primarily in spray paint and acrylic, Wise’s paintings fit somewhere between abstraction and representation. He normally avoids proper paint brushes, paints only on canvases laid flat on a table, and mixes mediums. He is motivated by an empty canvas, broad archetypal subjects and unconventional application techniques. Wise teaches film studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He finds landscapes compelling as subjects because they seem suited to straddling abstract and representational modes, the area between which he feels most comfortable working. They suit his application methods as well, which are often improvisational and decidedly industrial. Wise uses things he either finds in the garage or at hardware stores. Trowels, large masonry brushes, squeegees, spray paint applied directly from the commercial canister. He works quickly, canvas flat on a table, and the work is physical, standing always, rotating the canvas, scraping, pouring, spraying, and swiping. He is most comfortable working at 60/40: 60 % preconception and practiced technique and 40% whatever happens. Sometimes the whatever happens gets folded later into practiced technique and sometimes preconception and practiced technique veers wildly into whatever happens. Wise normally works on five or six canvases at a time until, to paraphrase Gerhard Richter, they don’t disturb him anymore. He then moves them out to dry to make room on the tables for more blank canvas. The blank canvas is really the only motivation.