Not so naive

I am certainly enamoured by butterflies and their potential for conceptual play...this work has an obsessive quality which I am drawn too, but a balance of one main character and many subordinate characters...sometimes Tony Fitzpatrick's work becomes a bit formulaic...but, I think there's a strong evolution that counter's the similarities...my favorite works are the baseball card series he did earlier in his career...the other elements that resonate with me are the commercial suggestions and the everyday images from the past and present...it fits nicely with the Chicago, Harry Who, imagist style...

The patterns are beautiful in the butterfly, balanced and unique...the strong, central image creates focus and allows the other floating forms to remain fixed in the picture plane...Tony's work mimics, naive artwork, or Art Brut, but you cannot run from formal training...it digs into your brain and soul and will not let go...

Ode to Klee

A playful and simple work by Cole Morgan...I like the contrast of open space to the intimacy of the small areas of detail...some of his work looks at fruit and the grid...this piece struck me visually because of its texture and the incidental mark making...the surface is aged and worn and I am always drawn to the presence of time...as if the work has secrets and has experienced things I will never know.

That is what I enjoy most about walking an art museum, the cracks and aged surface of Gothic and Renaissance art, what that world must have been like and the imagery of that period embodying its place in history...this work has that sense, manufactured and manipulated, but built on the Klee's, Twombly's and Da Vinci's...when the world is minimal, any contrast is heightened and visible for all to see...warts and all.