Geography & Music

In this series of 30 small, acrylic paintings that Vatne made over the course of one month-a painting per day in November-December 2014-he returns painting to its simplest-and paradoxically-often most aesthetically problematic decision, which remains form, colour, and the square as a geometric plane in time and space. In this way he is contributing to an ongoing dialogue with painters such as Malevich, Rothko, Albers, Ryman, Marden and, especially, Matisse that have preoccupied Vatne for many years. He remains reluctant to use language to 'describe' his work since his daily poem-practice keeps him continually engaged with language. Painting, for him, often expresses that which cannot be said in any other medium. He is, however, willing to say that, first and foremost, he considers all his paintings-even ones based in geometry or physics-to be spiritual/religious expressions of faith and not based in ideas but a sensual, tactile and physical 'expression' of inner-states of consciousness. In interviews Vatne has spoken also of recurrent themes of darkness and light and lightness and heaviness as expressed through the medium of painting as a metaphor for the spiritual. When asked about 'Geography & Music' he quoted the writer Robert Walser's 'Looking at Pictures, ' (one of his favorite books): "A painter is a person who holds a brush in his hand. On the brush is paint...A person creating something is one who is utterly absent and without feeling. Only when I take a break to survey what I have done, does it often occur to me that I am trembling with secret happiness. How do I paint? I cannot say, since I do so in a state foreign to me. How to paint is something that can only be painted, not said. I show how I paint in my finished works...Often I feel-an indistinctive memory-what joy applying a color I particularly love must have given me...Even though I'm a painter, painting often-very often, even-has the effect on me of something miraculous, ghostly, ungraspable..." Robert Walser, 'A Painter' (1904) from 'Looking at Pictures' (Translated by Lydia Davis and Christopher Middleton), copyright 2015, A Christine Burgin/New Directions Book