Louis Watts and Cable Griffith

Louis Watts

        Louis Watts is primarily a drawer, working in and exploring the medium to its fullest extent, searching for new ideas and new questions to ask himself. The fact that he experiments so much with the medium really intruiged me, and made me realize that I've never really settled with a medium for any length of time in order to perfect or experiment with it. It was especially interesting to me, due to the fact that I love working with charcoal and graphite - I find drawing the most challenging, hands-on  and the down-right most enjoyable form of two dimensional work. He referred to drawing as the way you "figure things and ideas out", and I fully agree, and I identify with his appreciaton of that fact.
    I had heard about using charcoal dust to draw before prior to hearing about Louis' work - but only in the context of using it to blend in charcoal drawings- not in conjunction with adhesives. Louis uses rubber cement and fixatives to draw and create texture, which piques my interest in the outcome of his works.

 

 

    

 

The outcome of Louis' experimentation with charcoal and rubber cement is really intruiging, creating abstract forms and lines, to the point that one can form one's own impression of what the image could symbolize, which is something I strive to get people to do in looking at my work. I think the freedom of interpretation is the beautiful and most precious quality of art as a whole.

 

 

 

 
I also find what Louis said about "line" being conceptual, not really existing in reality. He said that "line" only really exists in drawing. So, what he started to do is "anti-drawings", using paper masking, layers of charcoal dust and fixative to create images, rather than constructing lines to deliniate the object he was trying to show.
    

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Cable Griffith

        One thing that really lasted with me about Cable's work is the actual progression of his personal style throughout his artistic career, and how that progression really illustrates how a person's style can evolve. He started out doing impressionistic work then moved into more symbolic paintings and developed his own sense of balance and harmony within a space.
     Cable's sense of history also intruiges me - the fact that he sees his own work and the things he has done as an inspiration to his current work- rather than leaving a previously done piece, he looks to his past pieces for inspiration to the future.

Cable has a clear sense of playfulness and doodle-like quality to his work. His work explores the depth and constraints of a space, a familiar space recounted as a visual narrative through multiple panels. I find the fact that video games are one of his primary inspirations to be very unique, and shows how something we often think of as a boon to procrastination can be a expedient to someone's creativity.

 

His paintings become almost purposeful, a map to the world contained in his creative mind that is there to explore through both his landscape abstractions like the one above and his current work of creating entire worlds to explore, not unlike videogames.