ARTIST LECTURE- A Selbe -Spencer Finch

Yesterday I went to see the Spencer Finch Visiting artist lecture. I was intimidated by how many people showed up for it, the whole theater was packed;but it made sense after I had heard all of the places that his artwork has been shown.

His artwork is amazing, and the man is insane. He is so incredibly smart and thinks through every detail in his work. His thought process is so different from anyone else it is truly amazing the concepts he comes up with. There is a reason for every color, every line and every shape in his work. He showed us a variety of work that he had done in chronological order. He had many pieces that are based on colors and light, often in his work he recreates a color of something.

Even though he uses this consciousness of color and light in most of his work, the pieces are each very different and specific so i will just example 2 or 3 of my favorite pieces that he showed. One of the first images he showed was three watercolor painting side by side. They were not ordinary paintings they looked more like color swatches. Finch was traveling to Paris to see Monet paintings to do a project based off the colors in Monet's paintings. But when he got to the Monet paintings the building was under construction and Finch's plans were ruined. He then spent 5 days or so in his hotel room and he created this work. He matched the colors of everything in the hotel room and made color swatches on one paper and labeled each color the name of the object in the room. He did three of these one in the morning, one at mid day and the other at sunset/night. I really enjoy this piece because it is something so literal and simple but who else in the world would think to do that? Certainly not me. The piece is so abstract and odd looking from a distance but when you get close you see the names of the individual colors and it changes from abstract to something different.

"The River That Flows Both Ways", Photograph detail of installation, Spencer Finch

This image above is just one part of this amazing piece Spencer Finch installed in New York City called "The River that flows both ways." For this project he took 700 reading of the color of the Hudson river during a day, he turned they class windows into a timeline of how the colors changed on the hudson river. It is amazing and beautiful and the full image is below.

"The River that Flows Both Ways", photograph of installation, Spencer Finch

I really don't feel qualified to write about this amazing artist, his lecture and his explanations of how and why he created each piece leaves me speakless. The way his mind works is amazing and i am truly inspired by the way he records a place by the colors of the light, not by what is actually at a specific site. Everyone should go to his website and read about his art, and look at his art. It is truly awe-inspiring and i will never forget it.