The Columbia College of Chicago Library has added to their collections the exhibition catalog for Raw Reckoning from my one-person exhibition presented at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago this past summer. Curator for the exhibition Adrienne Kochman wrote a wonderful essay on my work and I also added a short essay.
What is Painting? Essay Published
Thanks to Norbert Marszalek for asking me to write an essay to answer the big question What is Painting? in his on going spotlight on painters and their thoughts. My essay can be found here https://whatispainting.com/michael-k-paxton/
Exhibition Card for Raw Reckoning UIMA Chicago →
Here is the front of the card for my one-person exhibition Raw Reckoning that opens June 7th and runs to August 4th at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago.
Information on Raw Reckoning Opening and Exhibition →
Opening Reception: 6-9pm, June 7th, 2019
On display from June 7th-August 4th, 2019
Raw Reckoning is veteran Chicago artist Michael K. Paxton’s one-person exhibition of large-scale paintings and works on paper that derive their structure from the study of slide sections of the effect of black lung disease on coalminers. Paxton, a sixth generation West Virginian creates pillar size fields of chalk, charcoal, gesso and acrylic on raw canvas that embrace this ongoing devastation from coal in an effort to point to a place and people not heard from often in contemporary art. Through a well ingrained working process of size and materials, the open-ended approach of how each painting is developed produces a colorful and awkward work of aggressive mark making that refuses to stand still. Pushing hard against expectations an otherness surrounds his work as he looks for the exact point where his bone deep Appalachian heritage can carve out a place for a heart’s desire to speak of something important, personal and yet as common as dirt.
Raw Reckoning Opens June 7 →
June 7th will be the opening of my one-person exhibition Raw Reckoning presented by the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago (UIMA). This exhibition will feature my most recent 96” x72” large-scale paintings, 72” x 50” charcoal on paper drawings, sketchbooks and an extensive catalog produced by the museum. Organized and developed by Adrienne Kochman, Curator and Olivia Rozdolsky, Assistant Curator the exhibition will run until August 4, 2019.
"Raw Reckoning" Exhibition Announced
I am pleased to announce that my one-person exhibition of recent large-scale paintings and works on paper titled “Raw Reckoning” will be presented by the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, IL from June 7th through August 4th, 2019. Thanks to Adrienne Kochman, PhD, Curator of the UIMA for her wonderful support of my work and Olivia Rozodolsky, who will design the extensive catalog. This will be a major museum size exhibition and I am both honored and humbled.
