Deo Gallery's August 2022 Exhibit - "Practice as Prism"
Taimur Cleary grew up standing on top of a compass rose in northern Michigan. Indeed, some say he is there, still. He painted as a child, and has found various ways to maintain the habit;…
By Maren Doughty
Taimur Cleary grew up standing on top of a compass rose in northern Michigan. Indeed, some say he is there, still. He painted as a child, and has found various ways to maintain the habit; including but not limited to, undergraduate degrees in painting and photography at Miami University, and an MFA from Pratt Institute. He has received a range of grants, awards, and residencies as an artist and educator. Currently, he paints and teaches full-time as an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Northern Michigan University.
Through a prism, sunlight is divided into separate wavelengths of color. Using a lens and a second prism, these wavelengths, once separated, can be recombined.
All the work in this exhibition has been shaped in some way by my teaching practice. In many instances, you will see finished versions of work made for classroom demonstrations. Often, I work alongside students as we complete assignments together. This space includes demonstration works from 100, 200, and upper-level classes.
While they appear, possibly at first, to divide into separate media and styles, I find it more interesting to look for connections across the work (Michigan). Nonetheless, I offer this breakdown of the stylistic and thematic spectrums reflected in the exhibition.
A series of mixed media, photo-transfers document the south-facing side of Washington St. from a late summer morning in 2021. With scale and color relationships that echo hand-colored photographs and postcards, these prints intend to court nostalgic themes. By including liminal spaces and gas stations, as well as iconic buildings, I hope to complicate how we view nostalgia, banality, and even history.Three separate grids of photographs highlight colored rocks taken from very specific beaches. Additional rocks from each beach have been placed at the base of their respective pedestals. Two of the beaches included are on Presque Isle, and one is south of Pt. Betsie lighthouse, downstate. Rocks have taught me a lot about how to look carefully, about place, and about how much people like to talk about rocks. These grids are as much about types, as they are about beauty and taste.The oil paintings in the space are a continuation of a practice that dates back 20 years. Aside from layered puns about the history of landscape painting, they are also informed by ideas connected to perception, memory, doppelgangers, season, atmosphere, phenomenology, and especially place.Small “flocks” of abstract, mixed-media paintings take influence in color and design from birds found in the UP. Each painting attempts to use only the colors of a chosen bird across a series of different, related compositions. Gestural marks are influenced by behavioral characteristics of each bird. The exhibition includes an ear full of Cedar Waxwings, an irruption of redpolls, and bouquets of Black-Throated Green Warblers.
