from Ubiquitous Serpentine

(Reach for the Sun, by Charles Lucas)

Nature’s Underworld

A sensuous beauty shimmers through the paintings (glass paint on ceramic) Round Bend Press is pleased to present in Ubiquitous Serpentine, recent work by Portland, Oregon ceramic artist Charles Lucas.

Distaining anything like a straight line in his compositions, Lucas’s ambition is to enhance the serpentine, a profound explication of the mysteries inherent in nature. His bold, color-laden brush strokes wend like suddenly revealed secret pathways in a magical garden, where everything seen is impetuously drawn from a cellular essence invisible to the naked eye.

The viewer must go deep inside the artist’s vision of nature to feel the meaning of these paintings. They are interpretive, and to a large degree merely the guesswork of imaginative recognition. They contend that we are more than our understanding and far removed from our belief.

Light and texture clash with the forces of chaotic beauty in these works, balanced by the lushness of the compositions’ shadowy recesses. To peer at them closely is to be taken in, submerged in the possibility of what lies below the obvious, the surface, in nature.

Each composition represents a particular place in the natural world, or a rendition of a particular organism as seen through the artist’s view of how things might be in nature’s underworld.

Splashes of unexpected light counterbalance the steadfast reality Lucas has conjured in each painting. What prevails in every composition is a joyous celebration of what might be. The puzzling question thence is what do we really know about the natural world that hasn’t been summarized under the botanist’s microscope or notated in a scientific journal?

The answer lies in what we make of the known while leaving nature open to interpretation.

What we might make of nature is just this, the artist says in a stunning display of beyondness.

These are imaginative works by the Chicago-born artist who is widely known for his ceramic sculpture and mosaic tile installations.

Round Bend Press sincerely hopes you enjoy Charles Lucas’s newest vision in Ubiquitous Serpentine.

(To be published on Nov. 1)


TS