Craig Blietz
Artist Statement

I often choose the cow as a vessel for expression. As a ubiquitous creature of the landscape in which I live, the cow continually provides visual prompting. I am drawn to the animal's geometry, it's angular anatomy and it's close cut coat which reveals this form. Of great interest to me recently, has been the patterning present in their coats. The shapes of black and white not only define one another but create an interlocked grouping not unlike that of land and sea or of a cast shadow from a tree's foliage upon the ground. When looking closely at a singular cow or broadly at a herd, their black and white markings transcend being indicative of the animal and become a facilitator of non-objective patterning. The monochromatic palette that I used in both the paintings and drawings strikes sharpest at the essence of this patterning. All of this provides a platform for suggestiveness very similar to that of a Rorschach ink blot, opening the door for the viewer to visualize representational figurative form out of abstract non-objective form. In these works I have taken figurative form and pattern, and isolated it into abstract non-objective form leaving the viewer to reconstruct the shapes into their own visual figuration.