pete kohut

crickets

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 04:39:00 +0000

I'm thinking of starting this blog up again. I'd like to make a series of posts about what I've been up to since my MFA grad work. Stay tuned?

When the dust clears

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 01:48:00 +0000

Been a rough couple of months getting my bearings post-MFA but I think I'm getting there.

A Watched Pot Never Boils

detail

Sun Dial At Night

One Counter Clockwise Turn

The Fool On The Hill

High Latency

Rubber Banding

Each painting is 70" by 70", oil on canvas from 2021 (first 4 are what I presented for my thesis presentation).

Oranges

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 04:04:00 +0000

Here's a view of the work I presented for the final critique of my MFA program. I still have 2 and a half months before my defense, but this work is looking forward to my thesis work.

A quick walkthrough.

The orange presented as a calendric recording of time and past events. A counting of the days/units of time, imposed onto an orange, suggesting a micro/macro view of units of time. An exploration of habit/repetitive systems of making. Evoking a longing for touch.

(From left to right: January 2021, February 2021, March 2021)

End of 2020 reflections

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 16:28:00 +0000

This semester was one of searching and re-evaluating my practice. I've been searching for my subject, who I am as an artist, and why this is important?

While I was initially following a phenomenological kind of thread, feedback from my cohort, profs, and visiting artists had led me to conclude the following: that painting about painting is not enough to connect to people, and is there anything new that I bring to the table. My work from the summer has been overshadowing the work I've done this term. The vents series (here) points to a specific form and captures an honest sense of being. So I've been trying to chase the success of this work while also re-acquainting whilst re-evaluating my painting practice. Many highs and lows these past four months, nevermind how the instability of the world may be breathing onto the work, but here are some key works I did this semester.

I'm not sure if I'm any closer to answering these questions just yet but I do know that colour is a major element of my practice. Also, process, or a daily practice is also important to the work. So my search continues and I think it's probably a healthy place to be. It may be nerve-wracking and frustrating for my ego, but this development of my practice is long-game stuff. I may not be able to see how it's helping now, but in 10 years it might all make sense. I've been made aware of what's at stake here: my paintings could be easily dismissed as being vapid. And I think being dismissed (or indifferent) is worse than being rejected.

Over the holiday break and until we get access to our studios again (Ottawa is going into lockdown again), I'm going to mix up and paints and also make drawings looking for single forms that I might be able to probe.

End of term reflections

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:37:00 +0000

We are coming to the end of our summer studio term which signals the halfway mark of my MFA degree. It's been a strange couple of months for obvious reasons, but it has been remarkably productive for me in terms of thinking about and repositioning my practice. Here's a statement I made in October of 2019 and I'm fascinated by some of the fundamental shifts of interest.

"My Project:
Abstraction is a way for me to talk about things/being in the world without relying on making things that look like things.
I'm not interested in purity or the essential or the universal but I am interested in compressing forms so that they bounce back at you.
I'm interested in reducing things so that they seem simple, uncomplicated but certainly are not certain. They do not have clear meaning. They don't mean one thing but can take you elsewhere to other things. This strategy allows room for interpretation, for contemplation.
I make this work because in my experience of being in the world, it needs more space for unrestricted thought, imagining, free-association, reverie.
This is my project."

What strikes me most significantly are three things:

1. I have shifted into a more factual/actual recording of things in the world (ie. rubbing of vents, colour from direct observation).

2. I'm still interested in reduction, but with the aims of making things more specific, to create a space for a focused presentation of ideas.

3. I'm still working on doing better at this, but I'm aware of the need to decenter my experience of the world (as a straight, white, Anglophone, upper-middle-class, middle-aged man).

I heart NY

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 21:43:00 +0000

Here are some images from my recent trip to New York City. So much to do with so little time . . . I'll have to go back again.

Mondrian revisited

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:36:00 +0000

Several of the people I've had to my studio for visits have all suggested that I take another look at the grid paintings by Mondrian. I've been kind of put off by Mondrian for a couple of reasons: the rigidity, desire for purity and essentialism, autonomy of the picture, and the chauvinistic/sexist discourse around the work. I've also been blaze about his work cuz it seem tight, constrained, confined to the square. But each one of my visitors (profs, art historians, art theorist, and a curator) have all said, "Take another look. Don't worry about what history has done to it. Look at the surface. Look at it again."
And so I did. (below is the piece at the National Gallery of Canada)

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 12 with Blue (1936-1942)

And I'm glad that I did. It may be because I was open to looking anew at the work but immediately I could see the vertical and horizontal movement of the black lines. The strange optical illusion of grey squares in the intersections of the black lines caught my attention because they produced a slow fade instead of buzzing around as they might do in a reversed white/black situation). I noticed that although he must have taped off the lines at some point, the edges were not hard and crisp as I had assumed them to be (like Molinari in the other room) but it seemed as though he must have gone back in with the black and the white several times. The result is a softer edge, like a blur, think Rothko on a much smaller scale. I also noticed how thick the off white paint was (kind of a cool eggshell hue ;) and the stroke of the brush is still visible. So I have to concede the point, there is much more there and I need to dig even further and find out what it is really all about. I will suspend my judgments until then.
On my walk to the studio from the gallery, I noticed the framing of the windows in the old train station downtown. There's the diagonal.

Some new stuff

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 01:57:00 +0000

These paintings are about the inside and the outside.

Form is the rational grid section/detail
but is eyeballed, not measured or mechanical
Organic, human divisions

Obvious piece missing implicates the wall as
not just a ground for the figure of the painting
but are interdependent

The wall is important as the medium of silences
between the paintings (music metaphor to time between notes)

Neons: reflective outward moving hue
with interior, self-referential gesture

White painted over green to absorb the light
an internal motion, but mimics the outside
of the wall.

The work pulses and acts on the optic
nerves back and forth viewer to image

Sides are left green causing halos
a play of dimensionality, a tease for the
viewer to approach or walk around

Chiasm: Maurice Merleau-Ponty refers to this word in The Visible and Invisible, The Intertwining-The Chiasm
-the point where two chromatids are intertwined (interwoven) in a cell

Input:
-questioning what is inside and outside
-how far does the logic need to be consistent?
-is the green edge important?
-synthetic colour
-small grid seems to work best with the gesture/scale
-Carol Waino: sensitivities and grey
-John Murchie
-Gary Neil Kennedy: painted murals
-notations on approximations to make to refer to other things

Eastward

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 13:27:00 +0000

Feedback in point form (so I could keep up with what people were saying):

-empty, absence
-a narration of space, why? overpowering smell (due to paintings drying and poor ventilation)
-confining, ominous
-uncomfortable
-disruption of the horizon
-space not serving the painting
-you have to physically move to view it
-periphery
-death, coffins
-horizon and underground
-sky, ground, below ground
-fertilizer? (not sure why I wrote down, I can't remember the context)
-intrusion
-pieces
-peripheral, not working
-weight
-the smooth texture is uncomfortable (!!!)
-don't know what they are paintings of
-the curiosity of colour, exploration, inquiry
-engaging
-dissonance is working as it should
-non-conventional display
-relationship with time

A few more comments:
-site-specific, what's more important? Triad of painting, space, intersection?
-explanation takes it beyond being in a convenient space: how to make that more pronounced? Could incorporate elements specific to space ie. floor trim etc
-deliberation in terms of surface nuance, tones, textures
-raw feet (could be grey of the door trim)
-to avoid accidental or the happenstance, perhaps angles are present on the plane? shadows?
-will be a fine line to tip over to trompe l'oeil though
-clues
-scale and size of the panels for consideration (beyond the pragmatic)
-comes close to corporate decoration but denies that reading
-backs of the canvas? consider, could be another place to reinforce the work, ie subtly, nuance, precision
-trading in subtleties, edges of the canvas
-restate the thesis in every aspect
-does it come from the space?
-shape colour space form
-denial
-fine line
-isolating
-painting the oscillations
-could become architecture
-places of the junctions: could be interesting, painting the space where things meet

Install tests

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Sat, 05 Oct 2019 23:22:00 +0000

Now that I had a couple of pieces painted and ready, I booked out one of the installation rooms and started to play around with how I wanted them to interact with space and each other. It was a fruitful experience and I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work for me. Here are some shots in progress

Stay tuned for more images of a finalized set-up (I've still got a few more canvases to make ;)
***

Processing some critiques/comments:
-why are they vertical, not landscape?
-landscape in colonial spaces
-don't shy away from the wall
-a colonial state: what does that mean?
-traveling across unrecognized borders of indigenous lands
-not as innocent as it seems: au courrant (this subject)
-the planes of the image
-we are the vertical element in the landscape
-Sandra Meigs: sloped paintings, personified
-self-standing makes it quickly personified
-the limit of non-objective paintings
-the fallacy of abstract material exploration vs. image
-emptiness of abstraction vocabulary
-Kirk Varnadoe
-Briony Fer
-Cheetham: Abstraction, purity rhetoric
-helps you think about what abstraction is to you
-painting beside itself: about network linked to things outside of the painting October magazine
-Isabelle Graw: keynote speaker in Vancouver "Thinking Through Painting"
-Sigmar Polke, Supporte Surfaces, French group
-Arte Povera

-the wall is important to me
-aware of edges
-scale shifts
-what is it doing?
-what are the spaces in between and around doing?
-moving/horizon
-animation, but we are the ones moving, Muybridge
-wall/corners
-light and responding to it
-light specific/sensitive
-entry into the work but not needed any longer
-bring you into the space
-Jane Ash-Poitras: how does she use colour
-horizontal vs vertical: landscape and the body, physical human body, our movement
-where do things belong?
-how to pull us in?

Yellow

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 18:01:00 +0000

My early explorations into the colour yellow based on my trip across the prairies led me to think about time, space, and discovery. How do I convey the constantly changing light in a way that isn't necessarily linear (because I am working from memory and not direct observation)? I like using sequential panels and used that as a starting point.
I wanted to explore the idea of movement through space as well so I started to set up the work in another room, just to see what happened. I was amazed at the effects combining the different surfaces created; how one plane meets the other. So I think the work is shifting towards being more about revealing, concealing, discovery, and, perhaps most of all, uncertainty.

Mixing experiment

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 14:37:00 +0000

Seeing as how I'm going through paint like a monkey's racehorse, I thought I'd explore the option of mixing my own pigments. This might save me some money and teach me more about the stuff that I love: oil paint. So I bought some Kama pigment and got to it.

DISCLAIMER: Always use eye, hand, and mouth protection when doing this sort of thing. The pigment gets everywhere and can be toxic depending on what you are using.

Start with a scoopful of pigment on a glass or marble mixing area (clean! so other things won't contaminate your mix). The dry pile while result in slightly less of a pile when it's mixed.

Add some linseed oil (or other medium) and mix it up with a palette knife. Add more pigment/oil depending on the consistency. My mix started out quite sticky so I added more oil. Should take 20-30 minutes to mix it up nice and good. You don't want to see a grainy texture and the paint. If so, keep mixing.

Et voila! I then mixed the pigment with the cold wax and found it to be a rich and lovely consistency.

Gorgeous!

Getting to know Ottawa

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 02:04:00 +0000

I've been in Ottawa for about a week now and I'm really enjoying myself :) It's fun to wander around and discover the different parts of the city. Here are some snaps of the sights I've seen so far.

Rideau Canal

National Gallery of Canada and Maman

VA building at U of Ottawa

Some cool steelwork on a bridge on the Rideau Canal

Very, very grand entrance causeway in the NGC

This white panel made me chuckle to myself

Kevin Schmidt piece made me homesick. "Stairway to Heaven: Long Beach"

Getting acquainted with the east coast Modernes. Molinari

Michael Snow

Iconic Jack Bush painting

Taking a break in the lovely atrium at NGC

Finishing my first (of soon to be many) visits with some Duchamps.

Library and froyo

Construction lights and scaffolding at night

My studio floor. I share this floor with my 6 cohorts. We each get our own room!!!

View from my window

Set up and ready to go

I'm sure this will come in useful.

Snap shots

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 19:48:00 +0000

Here are some snapshots from my road trip across the country: Vancouver Island to Ottawa. The trip took 5 days, approx. 45 hours of driving, 4.5k plus kilometers, and one Pete ;)
DAY ONE:

Ferry line up at 5 am

Sun rising as we approach Tsawwassen

Vancouver Island is back there, somewhere

First stop in Hope. Hot and dry

Stop in Kamloops. Also hot and dry

I wasn't able to include any pictures from my other stops from that day. I got pretty frazzled during the drive between Salmon Arm and Banff. Lots of one lane highway + transport truck + construction = craziness. Banff wasn't anything like I remember as a kid; it seemed like one perpetual hotel. The smell of fudge and the sound of the train whistle brought back some memories . . .

Exhausted in Calgary

DAY TWO:

Sunrise in Calgary

Motel in Brandon

Guess I didn't take many pictures this day. Driving through the Alberta badlands and Saskatchewan was pretty good. Boring, but easy because of the two-lane highway and fairly well-maintained pavements. I said goodbye to the mountains as they disappeared in my rearview mirror.

DAY THREE:

Sunrise in Brandon obscured by buildings. Google maps fail first thing in the morning; it was insisting I drive for 2 hours down a gravel/dirt road. Nope, chose the second option, the main HWY1 which would take 1 minute longer.

The "Halfway Tree" between Brandon and Winnipeg.

Stumbled onto one of my old haunts as a young teen in Winnipeg while looking for a pitstop. Dalhousie and Pembina Hwy.

Stop in a town called Ignace

A famous fire observation tower that was moved and rebuilt here.

Robin's Donuts in Thunder Bay

Thunder Bay motel. Large amount of non-universally accessible buildings in Ontario.

Getting excited now cuz the trip is half done. Getting used to being cooped up in my car for hours on end but got a fairly good routine going.

DAY FOUR:

Raining this morning in Thunder Bay

Weird town of Marathon

This was one of the hardest drives: Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie. One lane highways, construction every 10k, and torrential rain beating down from the sky. Drove through a thunderstorm while passing Lake Superior. Scary and awesome.

I noticed this thing in strip malls where there are glass enclosures for no apparent reason; from the parking lot to parking lot.

More heavy rain in Sault Ste. Marie. It was sunny 2 minutes before this.

Getting really excited now knowing that Ottawa was only 8 hours drive away. Getting a little nervous too in case my landlord decided to jam out on me. Was able to sneak in some D&D time cuz I got to the motel at around 5:30 pm.

DAY FIVE:

Leaving for the last leg of my journey.

Arrived at the place with 15 minutes to spare before my landlord. Got turned around multiple times in downtown Ottawa trying to find the place and terrorized locals with my illegal turns.

My little room for the next year.

Saved this ginger beer for 5 days, just for this moment. Here at last :)

Didn't take any pictures this day. I hardly stopped either, I was waaaaay too excited to get to Ottawa. Now that I'm here, I'm learning to adjust to a shared living space and busy student environment. I'm settling in nicely though and spent most of my afternoon today in the National Gallery of Canada. Lots of good stuff there. I also found the Byward market which is a cool market/eatery area. I'm only 5 blocks from the Visual Arts building at the University of Ottawa. I think I'm going to enjoy it here :)

Making studies

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 18:16:00 +0000

I'll be heading off to Ottawa in the next few weeks so I haven't been planning any large art projects. Instead, I've been making small studies (oil on paper) just to get the juice flowing. It was a bit of a struggle to get it going again after having such a long break from painting, but I'm enjoying myself up there in the belfry ;) Here is some samples of what I've been doing.

Retracing my steps

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 03:20:00 +0000

Now that I'm able to make a little art, I've realized that I don't really remember where I left off? So I'm hoping to not go back but retrace my steps to a few months ago. It's a weird feeling; I have all this built up energy to make things but I don't know what to make. I know the secret is to just make things and it'll all come back, but I think a few signposts from this spring might be useful.

-imagery: the grid as a handle, good metaphor for space/time (lateral, simultaneous)
-inquiry with experiential in painting
-phenomenological/ontology/perception
-awareness of colour, light
-immersive

-a meditation on the "in-between" space of a hue/tone

-Hella Jongeruis "colour catchers"

"It doesn't have to be real, it just has to be convincing." Agnes Martin

Kim Dorland: It Goes On @ Equinox, Vancouver, BC

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Sat, 15 Jun 2019 19:50:00 +0000

I make a point of seeing shows by Kim Dorland whenever I'm in Vancouver and have yet to be disappointed. I don't know if it's his colour sensibility or his emphasis on the stuff of paint, but I always come away invigorated to get back to the studio. What I think what also is the strongest for me in his work is when the layers of paint interact with each other. Thin and drippy and thick and slow, I could look at these images for hours.

Google searching colour names

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Thu, 30 May 2019 20:58:00 +0000

I've been thinking about where to go next with my studies in the difficult of naming colours and how that translates into visual form.

Memories of Hawaii

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 06 May 2019 07:22:00 +0000

Thinking about screens and music

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 06:14:00 +0000

This painting is a continuation of the studies I've been making about the ideas of teal, music, and vernacular forms like windows and screens. It was part of my final work for the advanced studio class I was taking.

The colour isn't showing up so great in the photo, but the blues I was using for this one had a lovely luminosity against the black.

Scale reference (a very early stage of the painting)

Dialogue with Vermeer

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 18:25:00 +0000

Here are some images of my painting that is in dialogue with Vermeer.

I found that this painting got pretty weird . . . but in a good way. I tried to break the rigidity of the grid with the gestures that I had found in the figurative elements. An interesting exploration. The painting really took me for a ride and I had felt that kind of impulse or drive since I painted Coral Pink. I want to chase that kind of feeling when I paint.

Depth of Field

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 21:35:00 +0000

Here are some snaps from my install at Xchanges Gallery in Victoria, BC.

Show opens Friday, March 1, 2019 7-9 pm and goes until March 17. I'll be sitting the gallery 11-4 on Saturdays and Sundays. See you there!

Comments:
-windows and doors become are related to the paintings, in proximity but also in form (blinds)
-a visualization or working out of photographic theory (mind you, this comment was put forward by a colleague who's practice is lens-based)
-orange on panel pulse
-insisting to be looked at
-a pair
-interconnected
-work rings true to my statement
-venetian blind association
-opens up to the vernacular
-not too broad
-sensitive to the space
-they seem to hang specifically for the space
-nasty and beautiful
-Alice in Wonderland effect with the low ceilings in the more sculptural cellophane works

Fisgard

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 05:15:00 +0000

I wanted to continue exploring the theme of the city with my painting. This time I wanted to be a little more specific so I focused my attention on my impressions of Chinatown in Victoria, BC. It is my favourite part of the city because it has a strange mashup of old and new construction, grids that don't match or line up, red on red neon signs, tile patterns, and various states of repair/disrepair.

This piece took me a little out of my comfort zone because I wanted to try using coloured gels as lighting. I was worried that it might be too hokey, but it actually enhances the piece in a more subtle way than expected . . . although certain hues (like the blue on the left) were really heightened by the coloured light.

Here are some comments:
-doors
-musical, rhythmical
-city scape
-old 3d glasses
-blue highlights doing weird things
-coloured light neutralized on the white wall (interesting effect)
-theatrical
-piece resists interpretation (i really liked this comment)
-atmosphere

Teal: interim critique

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Sat, 02 Feb 2019 18:04:00 +0000

It was hard to say whether or not my critique went well, only because it was more of a present-your-work-to-provoke-discussion than a finished piece that my peers and profs could critique. There were some interesting points raised, however.

This 2" square of cut fabric had more presence than all of the other elements. Could be the fact that it is a real-life object taken out of its context; certainly, something to consider going forward.

More images of the install.

The painting above does seem to fall flat and I'm going to rework it, maybe incorporate it with the tall, skinny painting that was to the right of it.
Comments:
-look at Hella Jongerius "Colour Catchers"
-look at Mary Heilmann: infusing abstract with subject
-think about teals of different eras, lost dyes and pigments
-colour as a bracket of exploration
-reinject the now with old colour?
-presentation provides a narrative build, maybe too easy
-let's me off the hook but also lessen the impact of the painting
-let's the viewer off the hook too since they are being spoon fed
-explosion of process, a bit much
-control vs. loose
-pacific northwest
-fashion
-measure of colour beauty
-self-conscious demonstration of working through the idea (prefer the autonomy of a painting)
-research of chronology of the hue
-"finding teal" presentation could be read as a narrative
-alternate presentation: book format of source imagery (I like this idea)
-Sarah Lucas "Yellow" 2015

The city as living organism

noreply@blogger.com (peet) — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 22:23:00 +0000

This piece is based on a reading about the Anthropocene. I interpreted the text and thought of the city as the biggest change that humanity has on the environment (the production of is what produces so much waste and pollution.) So I knew that I would be trying to evoke a sense of the city through the many greys that are present. But I also wanted to infuse the work with personal experience, lived experience, a lived impression of the city as a pedestrian (which is mainly how I perceive the city). Below are the results. I'm quite excited by these and may choose to pursue this line of inquiry to make a larger series.

Comments from the critique last week:
-doorways, windows, walls
-embedded in architecture
-old metal
-streets
-shop fronts
-pleasurable experience (muted, subtle tonality)
-topographical
-concrete walls/layering
-ambulatory system/placement
-more subtly nuanced
-familiarity of space/subject
(this last point being important because it may act as an effect hook for the viewer for future works)