Bruce Mitchell
Durham, NC

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I was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts and have lived in North Carolina since 2003. I was professionally trained as a draftsman, where I learned the fundamentals of drawing. Most of what I know about painting I've figured out for myself by working in the studio, which I've been doing since 1980.

I have worked in a variety of styles and media, exploring different approaches to both realism and abstraction in parallel. My recent representational pieces are almost all done with oils. My current series of abstract paintings also are oils. Other media I have used include acrylic, watercolor, collage, ink, pastel, and graphite, as well as printmaking. I paint full time in my Durham studio.

 

Bruce Mitchell


Artist Statement

My paintings are about being in this world at this time. For me this means living in the built environment most of the time, and that is the proximate subject depicted in most of my recent representational works. I make paintings of commercial and street signs, utility poles, buildings, vehicles, and other elements of our environment partly because these are so ubiquitous and familiar that we tend to take their presence for granted even as we use them in our day-to-day lives. Signs guide us to our destinations or indicate where we can obtain goods and services, while the core infrastructure represented by utility poles makes possible the online world on which we have come to depend.

Our built environment and the ways we interact with it are constantly being transformed. This ongoing transition to new and different ways of living is being documented in remarkable detail using new media as well as old media. My paintings are a part of that dialogue. New media are wonderful in many ways but are often ephemeral, volatile, subject to change, and so voluminous as to be overwhelming. A painting, on the other hand, has a lasting physical presence. There's nothing quite like good old-fashioned oil paint to capture the now for the ages. To me, these paintings are rich in allusions and metaphors relating to our civilization and the connections between us. That said, my own primary interest is more painterly. Regardless of the proximate subject, my paintings are explorations of the relationships between light and shadow, figure and ground, color and space. Ultimately, I seek to create objects that are capable of evoking an emotional response. Their physical properties, as well as the allusions and metaphors, support that aim.

My recent abstract paintings belong to a series I've been working on for over a decade. Their stylistic precursors date back to the early '80s, most notably a vocabulary of forms I developed in making hundreds of drawings on paper napkins. The central themes are ambiguity and play. The forms have no overt models in the real world, yet they frequently resemble objects. The forms lack any shading to suggest 3-dimensional shape. Thus, any impression of depth comes from the contrasting colors, the contours of the forms, and their relationship to each other and to the background. The absence of real-world references also introduces ambiguity about scale; the forms could be any size from microscopic to monumental. The viewer is drawn in by the lively colors, then engages in puzzling over what the forms might represent, their scale, and the depth of the picture plane. In this way, the fun of making these paintings is shared with the viewer.


Featured in the premiere issue of ArtSync: The Art Magazine of North Carolina

ArtSync: The Art Magazine of North Carolina
Available March 2, 2009


Selected exhibitions

              

Somerhill Gallery
The Venable Center
303 S Roxboro St.
Durham, NC 27701
 
Light and Shadows: A Group Exhibition
July 17 - August 28, 2009
Bill Hester Fine Art
143-F Franklin St.
Chapel Hill, NC
Carolina Semiotics
Solo show
June 2007

Umstead Hotel & Spa
Cary, NC

Picture This - Invitational Art & Photography Exhibit
to benefit Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina
April 14, 2007
Bijou Cinema
110 Front Street
Worcester, MA 01609
Solo Show
April 4, 2003 - April 28, 2003
New City Art Gallery
116 Pleasant Street
Easthampton, MA 01027
 
"Small Works Invitational"
December 1, 2002 - February 1, 2003
West Hartford Public Library
20 South Main Street
West Hartford, CT 06107
Solo Show
January 3, 2002 - February 28, 2002

Barrett Art Center
55 Noxon Street
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

"New Directions '02"
October 26, 2002 - November 23, 2002
Juried by Joan Young, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum of Art NYC
 

C.C. Lowell
258 Park Ave
Worcester, MA

Solo Show
December 2000 - January 2001
See review from The Worcester Phoenix

Pump House Gallery
Bushnell Park
Hartford, CT

Juried show, 1997
National Arts Program
National Endowment for the Arts
Worcester Artist Group
Worcester, MA
Solo show, 1989
Atwood Gallery
69 Hammond Street
Worcester, MA
Group show, 1989
Gallery 35
35 Institute Road
Worcester, MA
the pARTy (Group show), 1987
Grove Street Gallery
100 Grove Street
Worcester, MA
Various juried shows, 1983-1987

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© Bruce G. Mitchell