Verdant Gallery is pleased to present Returning Home, the Quiet of Undoing, Andrew Long’s first solo exhibition in Austin since 1993.
The paintings are the results of a studio practice that are rooted in investigation and process without attachment to a given result.
“In the studio, I sit with the discomfort of unfolding and not knowing. Uncertainty is very unsettling. I know that if I step aside, if I loosen my grip, curiosity takes the lead, and something unexpected begins to breathe.
Long explores unfettered boundaries and the permission to wander in and out of abstraction, form, color as well as organic representation and beauty. For Long, time becomes irrelevant as works evolve over months and years.
There is no strategy or destination in these works. The paintings are a cyclical iterative process. Paint is built up using a worn brush, putty knife, or poured. Long then employs various tools of erasure including a razor blade, belt sander, or Dremel. Often colors are chosen by intuition, not reason. Out of this studio practice a narrative or through line evolves.
“The exhibition title has multiple meanings. Returning Home is returning to full-time studio practice which is returning to the creative home within myself. Presenting these new works is a return to the ‘home’ of showing work in an Austin gallery, in a city where I live and work for the first time in decades.
The Quiet is about no effort. Attuning and listening to my internal voice/intuition requires the absence of clutter, noise, and distraction.
Of Undoing is intentionally directing my focus and energies which requires undoing where it’s been. That can be as simple as putting my phone away and instead sitting in my garden reading or drawing.”
In the studio, Long’s undoing provides the space to make painting choices that enable true discovery and outcomes by following his non thinking investigations. The results are an exhibition of works that are colorful, playful, and resonate with deep emotion.