Jonathan Faber Talks Art at Champion Gallery

Log cabins, pine trees, abandoned boat docks, and supernatural light might seem like hackneyed imagery. However Jonathan Faber, current painter in exhibition at Champion Gallery – Austin, loosely reconstructs such subjects from memory. Faber’s expressive brushwork, disorienting figure-ground relationships, jumbled compositions, and bizarre color palette, render these landscapes unusual. Like memories, Faber’s canvases are disjointed and indefinite, as if the paint was so hastily applied to divest the artist his memory before it escaped him. Many of the works in Idle represent time the artist spent in Johnson, Vermont, wandering lonely wooded areas.

Jonathan Faber, Extract, 2011, Oil on canvas, 32.25 x 42.5 in.

Cues from the composition, i.e. depth with a clear background and foreground, communicate to the viewer that they are looking at some thing—a printer, or toaster, perhaps. Faber deflects objective resolution. Finally, it is this lack of resolution that intrigues one to look longer, searching for answers and stuck between obscured possibilities—therefore, idling.

Join the artist in lecture at Champion Gallery—800 Brazos Street, downtown Austin—on December 10 at 2 p.m. Idle exhibits through December 22, 2011 at Champion Gallery in downtown Austin. The artist Jonathan Faber received his MFA from the University of Texas; he currently lives and works in Austin.

Feature Image: Jonathan Faber, Scully b, 2011, Oil on canvas, 32.25 x 42.5 in.