John Puiia
Portland, Maine
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Stolen Artwork of Choice: An armful of Whistler's from the Colby Museum
Favorite Cartoon Character: Rocko of Rocko's Modern Life
Best Burrito: Wild Burrito in downtown Portland
Star Wars Character of Choice: Boba Fett
Favorite Museum: Portland Museum of Art
Drink of Choice: Shipyards Pumpkin Head Ale
Favorite Movie: Waking Life
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As a native of Maine, I find that the landscape here is integral to my sense of being. By creating dark and ephemeral atmospheric paintings, I seek to re-contextualize our definition of the sublime in relation to our contemporary surroundings.
Primarily this body of work addresses the feeling of existing in a seemingly infinite global city. This is in contrast to the work of the Hudson School Painters, who perceived the natural landscape of the American West to be near infinite in its scale and resources. The paintings themselves are slow, quiet, and heavy in their appearance and enveloping in scale. Depicted within them are a series of distant shorelines, hanging beneath spacious skies, always illuminated by sources of artificial light. The horizon is detailed with nuanced instances of trees, light, and city structures, minuscule in comparison with the massive backdrops of luminous sky floating behind them.
I create these paintings on self-constructed masonite panels. Through sanding and a unique gesso application process, I am able to achieve a highly controlled and regular surface.
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