2018 JOHN PHILLIP ABBOTT
John Phillip Abbott’s vibrant, pulsating, text-based paintings operate in the conceptual space between legibility and abstraction. His large geometric letters, which reference the Minimalist grid, are sometimes interrupted and partly camouflaged by layers of stripe patterns and expressive plumes of airbrushed paint. The words become stand-ins for the objects or places they describe, and the colors and patterns add layers of synaesthetic associations.
Much of Abbott’s work has a personal, diaristic quality, and his recent Desert Flower paintings are inspired, in part, by the desert town of Silver City, New Mexico, where Abbott lives and works. The painting Wild Horse refers to a particular vista in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, while also carrying associations, for Abbott, of the ultrarunner known as Caballo Blanco (“White Horse”) who died in the Gila Wilderness, and the horse paintings of fellow New Mexican artist Susan Rothenberg. Very Large Array refers simultaneously to the large array of stars visible in the New Mexican desert, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s three acres of radio telescopes (known as the Very Large Array), and the large array of mark-making techniques Abbott uses. Despite such geographically specific references, Abbott leaves his paintings intentionally open-ended, encouraging viewers to bring their own associations to his words, colors, and compositions.