2012 Baltimore Ave I Kansas City, MO 64108 I 816.474.1919 I Thurs-Sat, 11am-5pm

 

Travis Pratt

 

The Joplin Paintings: Part 2

Sound in Collaboration with Chris McFall 

 

January 2 - January 31, 2015

Main Gallery
 

 

The Joplin Paintings Part 2, is a group of works referencing photos I took while in Joplin Missouri after the 2011 Tornado that devastated a large swath of the town including much of my family's property. These paintings are about those pictures becoming memory. Using mostly shades of grey I've softened the edges and pared the information to an essential structure while honing an emotional accuracy. I've relieved the burden of specificity from the image generating a subtle but immediate impact. Stripped as they are of any resolution or clarity, the sense of loss is pervasive.

           

The aim of the first collection of Joplin Paintings which showed at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in October 2014 was to paint the experience back into the pictures through diverse mark making and vivid color in complicated arrangements. I wanted to pin down the strangeness of the whole situation as well as the visual shock and dynamism of so many wrecked homes and businesses. Such particularities in paint can only be generalized in the mind while overt reductions such as the paintings in Part 2 can be swallowed whole and remembered quickly.