Irrational Plausibilities

by Gussie Fauntleroy

In David Linn’s haunting monochromatic paintings, inanimate objects including stones and pools of water exude a powerful presence. It’s an otherworldly environment where nothing stirs but we sense something mysterious has just happened- or is about to happen.

Those unseen events take place in what Linn refers to as hierophantic time: eternal or static time where action coexists with timeless stability. The setting is just as measureless- an expansive, often inhospitable rock-strewn landscape, which for Linn is layered with meaning and paradox.

"Rocky land does indeed resonate with me," the artist said by phone from his home and studio at the base of a mountain in central Utah’s Wasatch Range. "It’s a very powerful part of my visual vocabulary. Part of it is from many years spent backpacking and climbing mountains where there’s no sign of other human beings.

Then there’s the physics of a talus field, which is constructed of things (rocks) that have broken off a mountain. To me mountains are symbols of yearning- they’re destinations and goals- and talus fields are pieces and fragments of that goal.

"Also it’s very unstable terrain and there’s a tenuous movement you enact on it. It’s a great metaphor for how we traverse life, not knowing the consequences or how our actions will affect others."

Linn, whose work is in three solo museum shows around the country next year, recently joined Turner Carroll Gallery. His first-ever solo show in Santa Fe opens with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. today, Aug. 25. The show continues through Sept.12. Creating imaginative alternate worlds, especially ones where the irrational appears plausible, is something Linn said he’s done most of his life.

As a very shy child, he felt somewhat disconnected from everyday reality. Beginning in high school he was drawn to surrealist art, the Baroque masters, conceptual and earth art, and American Luminist and Hudson River School painters whose portrayal of the sublime in nature reflects his own sense of awe.

Later, earning a master of fine arts degree in painting from Brigham Young University in Utah, he challenged himself to push the creative process up a notch by employing a version of realism to explore ideas and emotions from his core, from a place, as he put it, "where neither words nor images exist."

An avid backpacker and mountain climber, Linn knows the experience of exploring unfamiliar terrain has a powerful influence on his thinking and perception. Yet in his art he is more interested in concepts and ideas than in depicting the natural world. An although a deep, spiritual base that includes membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints feeds his work, the imagery is metaphoric and universal, transcending any particular set of beliefs.

What is important, he said, is art’s power of shifted perception. When a piece is successful, the viewer enters the image as if it were a "real" participant, then comes upon an odd or unexpected element that nonetheless feels credible within that environment. In addition to the elimination of naturalistic color, the artist’s mastery of realistic detail heightens that experience of shifted reality.

Adding to the work’s meditative yet expectant quality is what Linn called a "sense of intense, active stillness"- an effect achieved by creating a strong symmetrical composition and then introducing curves, tangents or arcs that animate the stillness. "There’s a sense of order yet an implied movement, a brooding element that alludes to sort of a divine presence," Linn said.

Many of Linn’s paintings befit as images that hover at the edge of his consciousness in what he called his internal peripheral vision. In other cases the visual and conceptual ideas emerge simultaneously.

"There They Wait for Me" depicts a placid sea with plumes of smoke rising from objects on the water. The idea came out of Linn’s reading of journals written by his pioneer ancestors. "I ‘saw’ an image of a place, a shallow sea, with floating pyres, perhaps sacrificial platforms floating with fires on them," he said. "They’re representative of the sacrifices those who went before me offered and I sense that somewhere they’re waiting for me to do the same."

In a sense Linn already is doing that. With his meticulous, time-consuming painting, he sacrifices time that could be spent on his other interests including writing poetry, composing and performing avant-garde music on keyboards and guitar, spending time with his fiancée, and designing experimental radio-controlled objects that fly (or to see whether they will).

But the sacrifices are worthwhile, he said. The long hours in his "dungeon" of a basement studio result in paintings he referred to as offerings- meditative journeys through his interior world. Other people can experience those journeys with open-ended interpretation.

"I think one of the great things about art is its ability to draw back the curtain and invite people into different worlds and let them see things that in daily life they might not otherwise see," he said. "It can change the way we look at things.