Details:
① Artwork:
The Fox Hunt
This painting borrows its title from a Winslow Homer composition with that work reproduced on the wall behind an unfolded questionnaire. In the Homer painting, a small fox scurries across the snowbank looking for food—becoming the fixation of ravenous crows. Interpreted by scholars as a symbolic self-portrait, the painting also illustrates Homer’s interest in Darwin and The Survival of the Fittest. Tharp’s nod to Homer's painting in this work is underscored by the Patient Health Questionnaire obscuring a wall of painting references while asking, "Is Your Mood Affecting Your Health?" Not unlike the fox in a field of snow, the provocative question about demeanor and mental fitness is situated in a minimal and vacant field. The work is both a reflection and representation of the artist's temperament and relationship with painting.
As in all of Tharp's figurative work, the primary aim of this composition is to explore various traditions of painting and sculpture by combing them with the artist's own style—emerging with something altogether new. Tharp's process is both instinctual and strategic; however, there is never one, singular organizing principle at work in his compositions. Each painting involves fumbling around in the dark while simultaneously maintaining the projection of the artist's ultimate intentions.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Storm Tharp’s paintings are created instinctually, eschewing any single organizing principle. The artist’s figurative works explore the combination of various painting and sculptural traditions with his own strategies—a process always driven by the artist’s beliefs and narrative sensibility. For Tharp, portraits can evoke an entire life story when the colors on the picture plane serve as an emotional code for unraveling that life story.
BIO:
Storm Tharp was born in Salem, Oregon. The artist received a BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1992. Tharp also studied at the Roberto Einaudi Architecture Program at the Palazzo Massimo in Rome, Italy in 1991.
Solo exhibitions of Tharp’s work have taken place at: Cornell University’s The Herbert F. Johnson Museum and Milstein Hall in Ithaca, New York; the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon; Galerie Bertrand in Geneva, Switzerland; PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon; and Feldbuschweisner in Berlin, Germany; among others.
Group exhibitions that have shown Tharp’s work include: Up Close & Personal at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington; Doomtown at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon; American Genre: Contemporary Painting, curated by Michelle Grabner at ICA at MECA in Portland, Maine; and the Whitney Biennial 2010, curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
Tharp’s work is held in numerous public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio; Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY; and Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
This painting borrows its title from a Winslow Homer composition with that work reproduced on the wall behind an unfolded questionnaire. This work is both a reflection and representation of the artist's temperament and relationship with painting.More
- Unframed
- Signed
