Carlos Estrada-Vega

Material Color showcases some of the innovative ways artists are handling paint today. The twenty artists in this exhibition apply oil, acrylic, encaustic and other pigments to a variety of surfaces using conventional, as well as unexpected methods. With eye droppers, plastic bottles, turkey basters, palette knives (and sometimes even brushes,) they drip, splash, pour, squeeze, squirt and layer their colors, balancing chance and discipline. Several of them peel off dried paint from one surface and transfer it to another, while others model and mold pigment into freestanding three-dimensional shapes. All of these techniques result in colorful, voluptuous surfaces that seduce our eyes and almost beg to be touched. With their layered surfaces or heavy impasto, the works in Material Color blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and seem to transform themselves into three-dimensional objects.