Texas Trends in Art Education, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 1985 Page: 28
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of traditional art. The still life on the
table is real, and the art back behind it
is sort of not real. Yet the surface of
each object in the still life was painted
with paint, and the grain of the wood-
it was a beautiful oak table-was painted
onto the table--.
MARVIN: So that some of the illusion kind
of comes out into reality-. You know
though, in using the installation with its
three-dimensional pieces, you create
something of an optical illusion. You
know the optical illusion in which you
see a vase or a pedestal-? Yet, when
you focus upon the negative spaces on
the two sides of the pedestal, you see
two faces in profile facing one another?
But you really can't see both the ped-
estal and faces at the same time? Your
/28 mind flops the images back and forth-.
This painting does that. With the still
life and table installed in front of it and
with the Blue Boy hanging on its sur-
face, you find yourself slipping into the
painting but then flipping back out again
and realizing that it is only a wall space.
You keep flipping back and forth, and
you really can't quite hold both in your
mind at the same time. Well, one can-
in a way-but that is something com-
pletely different too.
In 1982 the installations suddenly disap-
peared. Susan Freudenheim explains this
transition and the advent of a whole series of
new paintings-all in black and white.During the late '70's, he combined two-
and three-dimensional objects to con-
front the contradictions between illusion
and reality, but as his understanding of
the work progressed, he discovered
that the traditional medium of paint-
ing-with all its inherent qualities of
surface tension and illusion-addresses
simply and clearly all of the issues of
form and content that he wanted to
pursue. ...
Blackburn's first movie-still paint-
ings consisted of a series of images
from black and white Western films.
Painted in greys and whites on canvases
that he primed with a dark background,
they captured the flavor of Hollywood's
visions of the Old West, featuring
stars such as Gene Autry and Roy
Rogers. . . . Blackburn worked in black
and white for nearly two years before
he began to bring color back into his pal-
ette (Freudenheim, S., 1984, pp. 24, 26).
MARVIN: These black and white paintings
of yours are the ones that really grab
me-on some sort of a "gut" level. I
mean, they start with popular images-
old cowboy movies. In reading one of
your catalogs, I wondered if it is an ac-
curate interpretation of the way you feel
about it. It does seem to "hit the nail
right on the head." You have used popu-
lar images which immediately grab
you-. They are reminiscent of the
stills they used to display outside thetheatre when I was a kid. The image
takes one back to that sort of thing, but
yet as an artist one is almost imme-
diately past that. You get into the paint-
erly aspects of the work-which is
intriguing.
ED: Yes, I think that that connection you are
talking about is in there somewhere al-
right. I don't know quite how to sort it
out, but it is true that it's in there-.
But it's also true that what I'm aiming
for is also very different. I use the still
because it is a familiar image that exists
already and is kind of "loaded" with all
sorts of feelings-.
MARVIN: It really is-.
ED: I think that the idea with me in part is
to kind of play off of that-to use it and
tap that in a way-but to play off of it, if
you know what I mean.
MARVIN: I really enjoy the painterly as-
pects of these. It smacks very much of
some of the things the abstract expres-
sionists were doing-Pollock, De-
Kooning-only you are using it in an
extremely different way. I see a lot of
Pop Art influences in it too.
ED: You know, it's a thing I always keep
trying to understand on a conscious
level. I think that I understand it pretty
much and do it from a conscious sense
of what I'm after, but there is another
level that is always sort of operating.
I'm always trying to understand just
what way I'm trying to make it work. I
think that there are certain images thatPainting No. 5
1984
Acrylic on canvas
73" x 94"
Collection: private
Photo courtesy of Moody Gallery, HoustonTRENDS / fall 1985
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Texas Art Education Association. Texas Trends in Art Education, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 1985, periodical, Autumn 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth279681/m1/30/?q=architectural+drawings: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Art Education Association.