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Passing Through: Paintings by Sky Pape

Sky Pape

My abstractions, hybrids of drawing and painting, are made with familiar materials like ink, water, and paper, and often unexpected, improvised tools like palm fronds. My idiosyncratic methods move back and forth between exactitude and intuition, entwining them.

These days, I wander looping paths, wondering about connectedness, disruption, and perception. Time, space, scale – everything is in motion. Can I believe what I see? My eyes absorb information, but I recognize the human mind is hard-wired to leap to conclusions.

Are fallacies preferable to uncertainty?
When perception shifts, is ambiguity acknowledged?
How much interruption can continuity withstand before it is broken?
How do dissimilar entities intersect and coexist?
How do choice and chance converge to form identity?
How does identity shape acceptance of ambiguity and the desire to explore not only different angles but all that is unknown?

It is part of my job to follow an idea wherever it may lead, using it as a directional signpost, not as a single, final destination. I work on multiple pieces at once because part of my discipline includes taking the time to puzzle things out. It’s important to linger in that place of ambiguity long enough to confront the limitations of one’s perception and move beyond them to identify connections where they hadn’t been noticed before. Curiosity, wonder, and adaptability are the necessary elements that lead to discovery, understanding, and perhaps best of all, more illuminating questions.

Stop. Look. Linger. Move on. Circle back and leave again. We’re all just passing through.

Nerve Center - Sky Pape painting
Nerve Center
CelNav - Sky Pape painting
CelNav
Triangulating Peace - Sky Pape painting
Triangulating Peace
Until the End of Beginning - Sky Pape painting
Until the End of Beginning
Double Necker - Sky Pape painting
Double Necker
Play It Backwards - Sky Pape painting
Play It Backwards
Day Into Night - Sky Pape painting
Day Into Night
Irrepressible - Sky Pape painting
Irrepressible
Cross My Heart - Sky Pape painting
Cross My Heart
Echo Chamber - Sky Pape painting
Echo Chamber
A Kernel of Truth - Sky Pape painting
A Kernel of Truth
Your Poisonous Past - Sky Pape painting
Your Poisonous Past
Sky Pape’s exhibition, also titled “Passing Through,” will be at Gilman Contemporary in Ketchum, Idaho, July-August 2018. Learn more at GilmanContemporary.com.
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Sky Pape

Sky Pape’s work is in in the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Tiffany & Co., Le Cirque du Soleil, and other public, corporate, and private collections. Awards and honors include residency fellowships in Italy at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center and The Bogliasco Foundation's Liguria Study Center for the Arts & Humanities, as well as grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, E.D. Foundation, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, and the Chenven Foundation. She is represented by June Kelly Gallery in New York.

Pape is a nature enthusiast and pom-pom waver for creative folks of all stripes. She lives and works in northernmost Manhattan. You can find more of her work at skypape.com and on Instagram @sky.pape.

Author: Sky Pape Tags: painting Category: Visual Art and Visual Poetry March 29, 2018

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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