71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Roger Chavez

Untitled Still life #11, 2012 by Roger Chavez

In the past three years, I have returned to painting the still-life.

For me, the subject matter serves as a point of departure, allowing me to find my own forms through exploring the subject. The immediate accessibility of the still-life facilitates my focus on the objects themselves, their shadows, shapes, and the space they occupy.

In my process, I focus on the same object(s) over an extended period of time. In working on one subject over this stretch of time, the physical arrangement of the subject is not based upon a scheme for a potential source of new visual information, but to confront the subject matter as a whole.  Thus, the placement of the objects rarely changes, and this provides an environment to discover something new within the same objects and the space around them.  Each attempt to paint my subject matter becomes new and different. 

Untitled Still life #1, 2011 by Roger Chavez

 The paintings are not initiated with a specific simplicity or psychological meaning even though these qualities are residual outcomes.  Fueled by quotidian reality the psychological outcomes in the works insinuate auras of mortality, timelessness, and identity. 

Untitled Still life #4, 2011 by Roger Chavez

Untitled Still life #3, 2011 by Roger Chavez

My working process involves a significant amount of adding and subtracting of painterly forms, resulting in an agglomeration of forms overlaying preceding forms and increasingly concealing the real appearances of the subject matter.  In the process, my color palette results in the use of muted colors and tonal grays, arriving from the use of the prismatic hues as these afford more vibrant and colorful grays and allow for subtle changes in color and temperature in the paintings.

by Roger Chavez

Roger's work is featured in Woodmere Art Museum's  71st Annual Juried Exhibition.

About Woodmere's 71st Annual Juried Exhibition: 

Woodmere's 71st Annual Juried Exhibition, juried by artist Alex Kanevsky, will feature works in a variety of media from 46 artists living within 50 miles of the Museum. Works were chosen to create a cohesive presentation that explores contemporary ideas within the arts of Philadelphia. In conjunction with the juried show, Kanevsky's own work will be on view in the exhibition Alex Kanevsky: Some Paintings and Drawings, and the artist has also selected some of Woodmere's works of art for display in Selections from the Collection.