Chris Pontello

This series of work was done with Nature Sketch paper, which will adopt an impression of whatever casts a shadow on it for about thirty seconds. I was initially inspired by the paper itself and curious to see what potential there was in drawing with sunlight. This fits with the aspect of my process that deals with allowing nature to intervene in my work, but with a very different aesthetic. With a monochromatic color scheme these pieces utilize value contrast to create the illusion of form. Some silhouettes are sharper than others because I experimented with moving my stencils in various speeds and directions. This was a process in seeing how far I could push this very limited medium without ruining it completely.

This process of blocking out the silhouette of a figure has been an exercise in unlearning some of the academic techniques that skew the intent of my work. What fascinates me about this concept is that it only takes a sliver of an anatomically correct silhouette to recognize that you are looking at a figure. It seems that the more ambiguous the forms are the stronger the compositional elements become. This series of paintings was very reliant on using spray paint and taping off large sections to define the form. I had an issue with the tape sealing the pools of paint, so in the future I may experiment with more techniques to get the same effect. Making stencils seemed to work well for thin layers of paint, but don't hold up any better when I try to pool a large area with overspray.