This exhibition features vibrant and explorative paintings by Randall David Tipton and highly inventive sculptures by John and Robin Gumaelius. Referring to memory as a primary source in his process, Randall uses distortion, radical simplification, and heightened color to create landscapes that are more about experience than physicality. Alternatively, John and Robin combine both skill and imagination to build a singular and unusual world out of clay and metal to form highly inventive sculptures that are often comical or bizarre.
Randall David Tipton is a self taught Northwest contemporary landscape painter using an experimental approach to explore pure abstraction in both oils and watermedia. Derived from direct observation in forests and wetlands, Randall approaches each painting in response to what he finds is most compelling on the site of these fragile ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. With minimal use of drawing and photo references, he constructs a framework upon which to improvise.
John and Robin Gumaelius collaborate to create articulated human and birdlike sculptures that are often comical and uncanny. Combining ceramics, steel, and wood, each piece begins with a character form on which Robin creates intricate carved and painted surface imagery. From there, John contributes by adding the metal armatures and wood appendages to animate the form. With elements of children’s stories, religious icons, reliquaries, and medieval and renaissance history, John and Robin combine both craftsmanship and imagination to build a singularly unusual world out of their materials.