Kaaterskill Falls (July 30, 2006, 12:37 PM) (Primary Title)
Spencer Finch, American, born 1962 (Artist)
"I think it also had to do with the idea of wanting to be a landscape painter, and then trying to think about landscape in a way that was nontraditional but had traditional 19th-century ideas."—Spencer Finch
In a body of work that ranges from pastels on paper to room-sized installations, Finch explores the subtleties of perception and memory. For his light-based pieces like Kaaterskill Falls, Finch uses a colorimeter to measure the light at specific sites and at particular times of day. He then replicates that exact quality of natural light in sculptures and installations using artificial light and colored filters, giving viewers an accurate, albeit artificial and abstracted, simulation of the original experience. Kaaterskill Falls recreates the light at New York’s celebrated double-drop falls on July 30, 2006, at 12:37 p.m. In attempting to convey his impression, Finch joins painters such as Thomas Cole and other 19th-century Hudson River school artists who were drawn to the site for its sublime grandeur. But Finch expresses his interest in light and nature in the idiom of modernist abstraction.
In a body of work that ranges from pastels on paper to room-sized installations, Finch explores the subtleties of perception and memory. For his light-based pieces like Kaaterskill Falls, Finch uses a colorimeter to measure the light at specific sites and at particular times of day. He then replicates that exact quality of natural light in sculptures and installations using artificial light and colored filters, giving viewers an accurate, albeit artificial and abstracted, simulation of the original experience. Kaaterskill Falls recreates the light at New York’s celebrated double-drop falls on July 30, 2006, at 12:37 p.m. In attempting to convey his impression, Finch joins painters such as Thomas Cole and other 19th-century Hudson River school artists who were drawn to the site for its sublime grandeur. But Finch expresses his interest in light and nature in the idiom of modernist abstraction.
National Endowment for the Arts Fund for American Art
© Spencer Finch
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