Excerpt from an article by Patricia Eakins: "A tree and two more eyes…," says painter Fred Gutzeit of his own work. This seems an odd thing to say about work that's fiercely urban and very intellectual, despite the literal-minded-ness with which objects seem to be represented. But in fact the artist is talking about the difficulty of seeing a tree or anything else with more than two eyes–a difficulty his painting takes as a starting point: "The more aspects of a scene experienced," says Gutzeit, "the deeper the understanding gained, the more the viewer connects the visual event with other phenomena". To show as many aspects of an image or idea as he can, Gutzeit frequently works in series of paintings, or if he does a single canvas it is apt to contain more than one view of an idea. Gutzeit's painting technique and the experience created by the images have a common ancestor in the artist's early experience in printmaking… |