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4/24/2021 the semi-finalist is: Michelle ross Like A Mountain (two fists of solid rock CM) 2021, acrylic, flashe, oil, graphite, and pastel on panel 65 ¼” x 83” Photo by Mario Gallucci The Not-Center and Synthesis Seeing Michelle Ross’s recent show at Elizabeth Leach was an hour of joy that almost felt tailor-made to mark the arrival of spring in Portland, Oregon. Ross is not a landscape painter, but her paintings paralleled the light outside on that day, from the atmospheric pools of indigo and silver to the punches of vivid color which act as stabilizing forces in her often tempestuous compositions. Ross’s recent paintings are, in her own words, de-centered. Visually, this means that the linear energy in her compositions is pushed out to the edges, leaving an interior space that is largely -but not entirely- atmospheric. The more concrete elements often suggest a geometric structure, but habitually avoid any obvious solutions. Buttresses - small, nearly solid shapes of vivid color - also make their way to the edges of these allusive forms. And like architectural buttresses holding up thin walls of stained glass in a gothic church, Ross’s small, colorful supports dutifully stabilize planes of luminous, ethereal color. One of Ross's many strengths is her willingness to embrace both the haptic and the literary. Her paintings stand on their own, but the titles - alternately poetic, clever, timely and suggestive - grant access to another level of her aesthetic stronghold. The titles function not so much as an open front door, but instead an unlocked window on the second or third floor. Scaling the trellis and shimmying over the sill is undoubtedly going to take time and energy, but it’s an effort worth making. Once inside, it's as if the space of the unapologetically visual begins to expand, opening up plenty of room for the conceptual framework that holds it in place. This is also the point where you’ll realize that you’ve just snuck into a fantastic party and you won’t want to leave. This month on The Semi-Finalist I’m pleased to present my interview with Michelle Ross. In it she talks more about de-centering, her competing aesthetic impulses, and making sense of the last four years.  Michelle Ross in her studio. The Semi-Finalist: Michelle, we first met back in the 1990’s, but I have to admit that I still don’t know your full origin story. How did you get started with painting and when did you make the decision to forge ahead as an artist? Michelle Ross: My first art classes were at the Oregon School of Art and Craft (later known as the Oregon College of Art and Craft) – when I was 19 or 20. I had wanted to pursue writing when I was a high school student and I read a ton- but I never took any art classes. It was because of a dedicated mentor who basically challenged me to go to art school after doing some independent study work with them. I had returned to Portland after a year at an alternative college program in Bellingham, Washington called Fairhaven College. It was an insular little bubble and again I was trying to get started with writing but felt restless and unsatisfied. So I returned to Portland and eventually enrolled at PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art) – which was at the time still embedded in the Portland Art Museum as the Museum School. I graduated from PNCA in '87 and went up to Washington State University in Pullman for my MFA in '91.  Sensor 2021, acrylic, oil, paper, silver leaf, graphite, pastel and colored pencil on panel, 24” x 30” photo by Mario Gallucci S-F: This next question comes out of our conversation about how one's temperament is connected to whether an artist's work is the result of slow accretion, spontaneous improvisation, or something else entirely. It's really a question about being true to oneself in the studio. So, with that in mind, can you talk about how you see yourself as a painter in relation to materials, techniques and the impulses that drive your work? MR: I think I often operate in a kind of dialectic between those poles you mention, and in the process of the back and forth some kind of synthesis emerges. At times I yearn to proceed in an either/or, fully committed, one way or another fashion, but I know that what drives the work is a kind of problem-solving mentality – so that neither approach totally satisfies what I want to see and therefore needs to be modified by the opposite approach. Which often creates a mess. This is true with materials as well – when I start to feel burdened with the preciousness and weight of the history of oil painting I end up introducing “low” materials- paper, textiles, scraps of detritus. Drawing materials also intrude into those surfaces. These things complicate the beauty and sensuality of the painted surfaces. Recently I have been using more aggressive techniques like pouring, smearing and staining, which then need to be corralled or harnessed with an overlay of geometry. This acts as a collision that results in the synthesis I am looking for.  Twelve Twenty-One Twenty Twenty 2021, acrylic, flashe, oil, graphite, and pastel on panel, 65 ¼” x 83” photo by Mario Gallucci S-F: Your titles often insist on evoking the here and now while your paintings seem to enjoy navigating the intangibles of life. Can you talk about that? MR: Sometimes that is true, especially with this last body of work, for example False Flag – which smacks of the current political conditions in the US. That painting in particular was a thorny problem to solve, meaning I thought I could keep it simple and concise and it became quite convoluted with many competing forces- color, directionality, asymmetry. I had to accept those contradictions while resolving the painting. That struggle seems to mimic the intangible, perhaps mental struggles of a year living through the pandemic and a nerve-wracking political climate.  False Flag 2021, acrylic, oil, vintage canvas, vinyl, silver leaf, pastel chalk, and graphite on panel, 30" x 40" photo by Mario Gallucci At other times the titles are quotations from poetry, or print media text. And with that the “here and now” and the “intangibles” can vary quite a bit. I think of titles as a way to point to a territory or context or lens through which to consider the abstraction of the paintings.  Above: Lamplight Surprise 2017, acrylic, oil and graphite on panel, 12.5”x 10” Below: Chicken Little 2017, acrylic, oil and graphite on panel, 12.5”x 10” photos by Mario Gallucci  S-F: You’ve talked a lot about the concept of de-centering in relation to the body of work you made for “I Am Your Signal,” your recent solo show at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Can you expand on that concept and how you see it manifesting itself in your paintings? MR: De-centering is a literal and formal strategy in many of the newest works. I noticed the tendency emerging with this and other recent work. I seemed to be inclined toward the periphery. I was drawn to engage and activate the edges of the paintings with a compression of shape, compressed energy and hot, saturated color. This got me wondering about empty(-ish) centers and unreliable or unstable centers that shifted, that weren’t clearly grounded or appeared unanchored. In relation to constructing pictures, I was considering how we are supposed to address the center, have a hierarchy of focal points, a balance of centralities. In some ways this visual thinking about the center and the not-center may reflect certain power dynamics that are currently at play between progressive, reparative, social activism (the hot periphery?) and repressive conservative politics (the unreliable center?). These paintings were made at a time in late 2020 with this intensified backdrop playing out. I think we absorb these social dynamics as experiences from our own vantage point and often they get echoed in subconscious ways. For me it seems to be playing out in this formal dynamic of not-center /compressed periphery. I think Jan Verwort is pointing to something like this in his essay on the painter Toma Abts, The Beauty and Politics of Latency: “In one moment, abstract art might hurl itself forward in time towards the yet unrealized and unthought. In other moments, however, abstraction only works because its enunciations reverberate with latent memories of things once seen or ideas once thought and then forgotten… In this sense, the space of abstraction is an echo chamber in which each enunciation resonates with intuitions of the yet unthought and the presently forgotten… Abstraction…treasures the latencies of thoughts, memories, and feelings as a source that is inexhaustible precisely because its content can be neither instantaneously nor ever fully actualized.”  Tempest 2021, acrylic, oil, pastel chalk, and graphite on panel, 65 x 83" photo by Mario Gallucci Or maybe it - the de-centering idea – is a parallel to my own very lateral way of associative thinking. I am always interrupting my own thoughts with adjacent next thoughts to the point where every idea feels like an edge, pressed outwards and up next to something else equally compelling. Where is the center in that? The center is a moving target and always contingent on what the quality or clarity of the periphery is. Anyway….below is a list of stream-of-consciousness thoughts that I think contribute to an understanding of what the paintings manifest:
  Installation shots of Ross's show, I Am Your Signal, at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Photos by Mario Gallucci.
 Keep2021, acrylic, oil, Korean hemp linen, canvas, silver leaf, tape, and graphite on panel, 30" x 40"
 Bathyscaphe (for CM) 2021, acrylic, oil, paper, silver leaf, graphite, and pastel on panel, 24” x 30” photo by Mario Gallucci
 Idyll Wild 2021, acrylic, oil, vintage canvas, vinyl, silver leaf, pastel chalk, and graphite on panel, 30" x 40" S-F: Who do you count as formative influences on your work and who have you been looking at recently? MR: Formative: Twombly, Stella, Judd, Diebenkorn, Noland, Joan Mitchell, Frankenthaler, Joan Snyder, Hilma Af Klint. Recently: Harvey Quaytman, R.H. Quaytman, Prunella Clough, Svenja Deininger, Elizabeth Neel, Yunhee Min, Tala Madani, Shara Hughes, Amy Bay, Lois Dodd, Julie Mehretu, Vivian Suter, Torkwase Dyson, Tormory Dodge, Monique Van Genderen, Pia Fries, Marina Adams….  Talking about formative influences. S-F: What’s next? MR: More experimental works, drawing paintings, affective color studies, simplification or a push more deeply into maximalism. I want to work on repetition. Returning to some older unresolved works, possibly shaped panels, more textile works. I want to do an artist book also – from the magazine page interventions. I have several different categories of works from those pages that form an organizing principle that could be a book.  Above: Research. Below: The studio.
 Below are more shots of Michelle Ross's work. You can also find her... at her website on the Elizabeth Leach Gallery website on Instagram: @michelle_ross_studio  Winter Bloom (1) 2015, oil, spray paint, house paint, paper, plaster, linen, chalk, and graphite on birch panel, 45” x 42” photo by Mario Gallucci  As is, So There 2015, acrylic, oil and graphite on panel, 12.5”x 10” photo by Mario Gallucci  The Inexperienced Miracle Worker 2015, oil, flashe, paper, plaster, chalk and graphite on panel, 62”x 65” photo by Mario Gallucci Mario Gallucci's photography website can be found at: https://www.mariogallucciphoto.com/art-documentation
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