Structural Tendencies by Mike Childs

Mike Childs
Left, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
30" x 40"

Mike Childs’s paintings attempt to create an internal order through space, color, and line, looking outward into the world for connections. His work has always been fundamentally abstract, however this latest imagery attempts to take that work one step further removed from identifiable representation.

In 10 new paintings (acrylic on canvas) and drawings (graphite on paper) included in Structural Tendencies, he concentrates on creating and juxtaposing shapes and patterns occurring in man-made structures with those formed in nature by bees, spiders and other animal builders. Childs says, “The urban, architectural environment which held sway in my earlier work is now being coupled with that of the natural world.”

While still allowing to be read as something related to the seen this new work pushes the boundaries of recognizable space. In subtle changes of colors, structure, and pattern these paintings fade, breakdown, and deteriorate, and in so doing, liberate and confine the spaces of his compositions in unanticipated and unexpected ways.

Intensive looking is integral to Childs’s studio practice and a prerequisite for viewing his work. His process of deconstruction and juxtaposition broadens the possibilities of meaning and experience of space and intensifies the activity of looking. On the second, third and subsequent viewings each composition reveals something new…some color or shape unnoticed before.  It is through careful analysis and patient observation that the internal order of his work slowly becomes evident.