Santa Barbara, CA - My Pet Ram is pleased to present Now You Don’t featuring new work by Anders Lindseth and Raychael Stine.

It is a difficult thing to visualize a thought, feeling, or time. Generations of artists have turned toward abstraction in an effort to shake off the constraints of representative convention, but the fact remains that putting pigment on canvas to convey something immaterial does not get any easier. Anders Lindseth and Raychael Stine play with the interstitial space between observation and the act of creating imagery. Using symbols and common subjects as their catalysts, each embraces tradition while veering sharply from the prescribed formatting of landscape and figuration. Using the recognizable as a jumping-off point for deep rumination on issues of perception, the works in Now You Don’t veer from the path into a more oblique conversation on the intersection between observation and representation. 

Visualizing the effects of heat distortion, waves of energy made palpable in the atmosphere, Anders Lindseth asks for a reconsideration of subjects we may take for granted. "I am thinking about mirages, the passing of time, and perceptions of reality," he notes. Revolving around myriad depictions of the setting sun, the works in the current exhibition ripple and morph the solar orb so as to contemplate the states of matter and their relationship to the phases of life. Indicating the march of days with each rendition, Lindseth catalogues indeterminate moments while also emphasizing the constructed nature of time and viewing. As the sun passes the horizon, the green flash burning brightly for a microsecond, we are reminded of the slow march of the solar system.

By manipulating his source imagery, Lindseth is able to invoke a variety of ideas from a single subject. The alien glow of twin suns in Cadillacs to Memphis offers a snapshot of elapsed time, while the gridded depictions in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 alternate between romantic visions and the ominous fire of a mushroom cloud. Focusing on our nearest star, something so common and familiar and yet unequivocally extraterrestrial, Lindseth casts a critical eye on the everyday. Extracting the omnipresent light source from centuries of landscape paintings, including the dramatic renderings of the Hudson River School, the artist does away with blasted trees and wandering rivers to focus on light and color alone. Pure energy smolders in the atmosphere, overtaking land and sea, as Lindseth stretches and orders each image to his will.

Raychael Stine’s raucous compositions manipulate traditional methods on a constructed stage to combine painterly gestures with symbolic forms. Trompe l’oeil floral motifs and emphasized impasto create layers of visual information in Ophelia 3 (Weeping River Jammer with Daisies and Black Violet) that twist and bloom over the canvas. The artist notes that a “Jammer” is a term she uses both for her series based on images of her dog overlaid with pigment as well as for figures like Charles Schulz’s Snoopy character. Using the hound portrait as a means of infusing modes of play and frivolity into her work, Stine builds upon this idea until nothing canine is left. Instead, the chaotic explosion of abstract brushwork paired with concise emblems creates a visual push and pull between surface and space.

In a further evolution, Stine’s more recent “Middle Lover” series operates with a comparable level of obfuscation that substitutes the human torso for the smiling dog. Approached without knowledge of their origins, pieces like Middle Lover (Early Spring Color Bowl) read as a cacophony of petals and rainbow tones, but a second look allows the forms of breasts, bellies, and sensual flesh to rise through the verdant screen of cosmos (a homonymic reference to the flowering plant and the expanding universe). The secret subjects that form the core of Stine’s practice act in a similar way to Lindseth’s sunsets. Each is a common baseline from which a greater degree of experimentation can arise.

Though both rooted in the examination of landscape, representation, and more traditionally-held ideas of painting, Stine and Lindseth’s practices are also inextricable from the digital age. The preponderance of solar images taken over the ages since photography’s invention (and highlighted in works like Penelope Umbrico’s Suns from Sunsets from Flickr [2006-ongoing]) combine with the legacy of Romantic landscapes Lindseth’s crayon on canvas works. Stine’s unabashed embrace of the flagrant brushstroke is paired with meticulous gradients and a sense of space that seems both shallow and infinitely complex like viewing a glowing screen. She notes, “The frame takes from conventions of modeling color shift in temperature and light to describe form, in shallow space, such as a drop shadow or a theater curtain; transitional space like water or a screen, and more expansive space found in landscape and atmosphere.” Both artists establish a rich dichotomy between the literal surface and the perceived depth of their creations. Throughout the exhibition, the familiar collides with the unknowable expanses of space and the intricacies of the human experience; Stine’s subjects disappear before our eyes just as the Linseth’s suns set below the horizon only to reappear as the morning light.

Now You Don’t will be on view beginning Friday, February 3 through Sunday, March 5, 2023. The gallery is located at 16 Helena Avenue, just off of Cabrillo Blvd in the Funk Zone. Gallery hours are Friday-Sunday from 12-6pm and by appointment. For more information about this exhibition, please email info@mypetram.com.