It is perhaps fitting that I write about Ryan Sullivan's paintings on the second or third day of a hurricane called Sandy that spreads wider and wider across Manhattan, Long Beach, New Hampshire and more. No electricity feeds my computer; the streets are empty of almost all traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. The first image atop my small pile of photographs is entitled October 14, 2011-October 26, 2011 (2011). The actual date is now October 30. In Sullivan's October, there is no hurricane but rather the crumbling of what looks like an ancient and slow-motion process of decay. Here wrinkled, there cracked, variously strained and erupting, the painting offers a natural process perhaps momentarily halted, in which Sullivan seemingly needed to slow his brush and consider the needs for this process' continuation.
Read more in the winter 2012/2013 issue of Kaleidoscope.