Join by John Burt Sanders
May 2020
Exhibition opens May 9th (viewable online or by appointment). In response to Covid 19, individual gallery visits can be arranged by contacting the artist at johnburtsanders@gmail.com.
“Join” is an exhibition of new paintings by John Burt Sanders. The work includes a series of paintings on raw canvas stained with dilute primary colors and overpainted with a composition rendered in thick oil paint that matches the underlying bare canvas. The result is an image that changes as you move around it as aspects of the composition recede or advance depending on the viewer’s position. Many of these paintings combine elements of formal abstraction and a recurring motif of undulating stripes, like those you might find on a waving flag. Sanders also references a 1754 political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin which features a snake cut into several parts. The text of the cartoon, “JOIN, or DIE” informs the title of this exhibition and the imagery of the segmented snake appears in several works. The general sense of the cartoon points to the requirement of many parts to constitute a whole. Sanders’ work asks us to consider the particularity of the part as a way to resist it’s being consumed by the whole.
Statement from the artist:
In my recent paintings, impasto linework lies heavily across bare canvas, generating a stark contrast between formless paint and woven support. These curvilinear painted forms are derived from 2D mazes, like those found on the back of cereal boxes. This solution line is often merged with a quartering of the support in the shape of an x or +. Each composition starts to suggest other imagery like maps of unknown locations or partial bits of illegible text, all the while painted in colors that are near in value and hue to the canvas, making it a challenge to discern the entire image at once. In general, I use my work to move away from thinking of anything as a unified whole, and seek instead something that is connected but composed of parts, completely without center.
-John Burt Sanders, 2019
John Burt Sanders is an artist from Arcade, New York.He completed his MFA in painting and drawing at Ohio University in 2011. Additionally, he earned a BFA in painting and art history at State University of New York at Fredonia in 2007. Sanders has been awarded an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council in 2014 as well as a Travel Grant from Ohio University in 2010. In 2014 he participated in a 4 week artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. Sanders currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2019, his work appeared in the Northeast edition of New American Paintings, issue #140.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the work please click ‘List of Works’ below or contact the artist at johnburtsanders@gmail.com.