“TURBULENCE”

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In the acrylic paintings and pastels of “Turbulence”, Michael Knight entwines tornado landscapes with people going about their lives, seemingly unaware and as yet unaffected by the dangerous conditions behind them. He renders jugglers, children playing games or a man waxing his car in unnatural colors against an expressionistic backdrop of storms, oblivious to the potentially negative forces that nature and happenstance can bring.

These images speak to the normalcy of life in tempestuous times, nagging the question, “just how secure is the trailer park of your life?” Vigorous brush strokes and a decidedly subjective palette present representational imagery and affected colors that suggest affinities for the emotional tensions that simmer just below the surface in an uneasy calm. A collage-based esthetic informs the compositional devises that reflect traditional western painting and modern expressionism in these stormy narratives that fill the viewer with as much hope as dread.

Knight works with acrylic paint that is applied to his canvases using techniques that range from thin washes, to thick gooey swirls of dynamic polymer. As the marks indicate, paint is applied in both quick strokes and measured motions from which images immerge, either clearly formed or only structurally suggested. Spending time with these paintings reveals how fluid abstraction and tightly rendered pigment complement each other to produce a magical reality that seems strangely familiar. The duel nature of dramatically applied colors and mixed techniques create harmony and tension that reward both long-range viewing and close-up inspection.

Knight has been working with these images since April 2004, stating. “Either this was a particularly good year for tornadoes, or I just became more aware of them and the coverage that they are given in the media. I heard, read and saw fantastic stories about near misses and total disasters. Can you imagine a blade of grass piercing a tree while a crystal horse remained untouched? Less intrigued by the devastation, I became fascinated by the beauty of landscapes caught in the throws of a twister and perplexed by the random nature of the devastating aftermath.” Knight referenced photographs and live footage to derive imaginary compositions that capture this phenomenon. The randomness embodied in these storms and the degrees of effect they can have on anything in their path, provoked allegorical connections to the circumstances that ripple in and out of all of our lives. Populating these awesome landscapes with characters who appear unconscious of the arriving storm creates parallel spaces, and the slight degree of separation that heightens our awareness to these circumstantial contradictions that represent any of the potentially unsettling times that await on our personal horizons.