A D D I E     L A N G F O R D
Gray SeriesHanging Gardens SeriesSculptureDrawing
My work is concerned with structure and sensation, specifically structure in painting/collage, architecture and textiles, and sensations or temperatures of the human interior. The paintings are mixed media, paper, and linen on a variety of supports and frames. The aesthetic is rooted between constructions in art such as tapestry, paintings by François Rouan, films by Ryan Trecartin, and structures in daily life, as found, for example, in the crafted object (quilts, baskets) and the architectural force in trusses, screening in lattice, or the compressive nature of exhaustion. Each layered system supports or counters a particular atmospheric stress.

These works are to be looked at with attention over time, like a drip licking a limestone into sand. The inability to see what is over and what is under, with color and temperature shifting between layers, frustrates the viewer's (I am not only painter, but viewer of the work) ability to take in an entire work. Memory, or in this case, underneathness, amplifies, obscures, or tints, shifting images and afterimages.

The work attempts to embody the way in which people withstand, resist or relent, to rites of passage, or possibly the inevitable. Persistent washes or compressed clay are porous bodies bearing (or maybe harboring?) the persistence of physical imprint, acted out by hand. Art, then, my art, through this lens is not something that can change the world, it is something that endeavors to transmit or seep tones of experience - at once surprising, painful and potentially beautiful, and if so, might hope to suggest the possibility of (a shared) restoration.




Website photos by Tim Thayer, Detroit, MI