SANTA FE, NM.- An exhibition of paintings by David Simpson, DAVID SIMPSON: Paintings, is on view at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art from January 10th through February 7th. The gallery is located in the Railyard Arts District at 554 South Guadalupe Street.

In winter the sun seems far away. The days are shorter, the nights colder, the days darkened by clouds and storms. In that darkness, we humans often seek light: the flicker of candle flame, the sparkle of slanting sun on snow, the glow of a hearth fire. Something in our nature turns us toward light like flowers tracking the sun from east to west. We have our own phototrophic natures.

Artists, too, follow the light. So much of the artistic exploration of the later 20th century was about paring back – striping work down to essential factors like color, space, and light. Particularly, light. Some used actual bulbs to paint with colored light. Some sought to attract light with gleaming surfaces, some used glass, playing with transparency. Artists, on their side, were testing out the possibilities and qualities of light much like scientists were doing with equations and experiments.

David Simpson is one of these artists who was captivated by light. His encounter with newly developed forms of metallic and interference acrylic paints in the late 1980’s were a game-changer. The interference paints contain microscopic particles of mica coated in titanium dioxide. These particles, like a thousand thousand tiny mirrors, reflect and refract light from within the paint itself. So light, hitting even a thin coating of this paint, becomes caught within, sparking, bouncing, changing wavelength, and therefore color, as it moves through this thinnest of three-dimensional surfaces. Simpson worked for years to perfect his use of these paints, developing his own unique trowel for application, and a technique that involves up to thirty layers of paint. Within these multiple thin layers, the particles sit, waiting to bounce light back and forth between them.

The result are paintings that are never still, never finished becoming. They shine and glow, they shift and shimmer. The color you see facing you one moment will not be the same as the color you see when the sun shifts, or the angle of your view changes.

In Painting, the viewer can view a collection of Interference paintings by Simpson from over the course of four decades. Ranging from the massive 6-foot diameter Tondos to the small 6x6-inch squares, these pieces shine and shift as the viewer moves around them.

The Tondos are large enough to feel almost like portals into a world of pure color. The depths and roil of purple in Violet Idyl contrast with the elegant golden orange of Cyprian Tondo. A piece like Rosa Reverso shifts dramatically from a subtle, dusty rose-mauve to a shining gold, while a piece like Over & Under Lavendar seems to shift through every possible permutation of the color. The smaller works, move differently but still shift and shine remarkably. From the greeny undertones within the copper sheen of Yellow Copper 6 to the moody aqua of Ryder 6 or the frosted and shadowed orchid-magenta Small Universe, these pieces present a continuing evolution of colors.

The viewer moves along with this mysterious inner-shifting of light and shadow. We follow the glint, dive into the dark, ride along the tide of shifting hues. Our phototrophic selves move through the gallery like flowers tracking sun.

For More Information:

Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
554 South Guadalupe
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-989-8688
fax 505-989-9898