STRIPPED ELEMENTS: ARTIST Q&A WITH ALEX PORTER

You mention in your artist statement that you want the viewer to create their own emphasis out of the pieces. What drew you to wanting this more interactive and interpretive response?

My impression has always been that the experience of seeing the landscape varies from person to person, and that there are many ways of seeing which are not frequently represented in traditional painting. Instead of using light and color to guide the viewer’s eye around an illusion of scenery, I want to include them in the process of creating an image that points to elements of the landscape.

How did your technique develop over the course of your work? What were the challenges of deviating from traditional landscapes?

I spent a long time doing more traditional landscape images in various forms, though I’ve always gravitated toward water media, specifically watercolor and ink wash. Being able to depict the detail of landscape became of great importance to me, and this is the manner of painting/drawing that best suited the level of detail I wanted. I found that many aspects of traditional landscape paintings (including ones I thoroughly enjoy) had to be removed from my process. The challenge was in determining what had to be eliminated so that I could show what I was seeing.

Some of your pieces feature fuller tree form landscapes, while others are more close up pieces. What impact on your portfolio do you believe this range has?

When you strip down your elements for making an image, creating a composition becomes like a math problem. There are hard limitations for what happens to the space if you aren’t using perspective depth or color. This becomes especially true if your only two values are black and white. My task becomes placing the lines that create the boundaries of my image, crafting it like an object rather than a scene. The different ways of placing lines represent different ways of looking at the subject, which in turn affects the tone of each piece. I’m interested in the gestures of natural forms as a language. This structure allows me to make drawings that are unified thematically, while letting each piece have its own say.

Do you have any habits that are important to your studio practice – such as do you need silence to concentrate, or do you always listen to a certain type of music, etc?

My studio habits are all over the place. I work at many different times of day (and often night). Sometimes I’ll anguish over making a single mark, and other times I’ll put down lines continuously for hours. When I have a delicate task, I may want it to be silent, but if I need to do a lot of repetitive mark-making to move a drawing along I usually want some background noise. The noise I’m in the mood for can be anything from Charlie Rose to melodic death metal.