James Parker FOley

A Solo Debut

August 12 – September 17, 2023

Sarah Bouchard Gallery is thrilled to present James Parker Foley’s solo debut.

In a statement for the exhibition, Foley writes:

When working in the studio, I spend a lot of time in a place I might call my painting-ocean. It is a psychological space in which I am submerged in my own notions of space and time. Beneath its surface, the busy goings-on of the everyday are muffled. Cavernous possibility engulfs me. These paintings are about being in that space.

I sometimes take for granted the nature of the line between ocean and sky, between figure and ground. These edges are entire worlds unto themselves. The figures in these works are those of us on journeys through the in-between horizons. They are diligently going about the business of becoming themselves.

This new series explores the color blue and the mutability of the boundaries that define us.

Exhibition Views Artist Statement Selected Works Press

Artist Statement

When working in the studio, I spend a lot of time in a place I might call my painting-ocean. It is a psychological space in which I am submerged in my own notions of space and time. Beneath its surface, the busy goings-on of the everyday are muffled. Cavernous possibility engulfs me. These paintings are about being in that space.

The experience of making this work was akin to diving into a deep and narrow pool not wide enough to turn around in, but with an opening on the other end. I knew ahead of time that going through would require tremendous energy, contained within a single breath. I did not know how deep the pool was, what was at the bottom, or if I’d come back.

As I was making the work, I found the boundary at the periphery of my painting-ocean. In my practice, interesting painting happens when I am working at the edge of my skill-set. I try to make work that I didn’t have the skills to make yesterday, but that I just might be capable of today.

It is on that periphery that I try to careen over the edge to see what is below. There, I am continually startled to find what seems to be a whole other painting-ocean. And getting to that deeper ocean requires both a deep breath and the trust that I will come out on the other side into a space with oxygen. This is what it means to go down for air.

In that sense, this is a show about trusting the work. It is about traveling between worlds: between the ocean of my practice so far and the ocean of my practice as it is yet to be. I decided, in the end, to make the show about neither of those spaces — it is neither history, nor fantasy — but instead, an investigation of the space between.

We think of the horizon as a line or boundary — and it is — but it is also a space. I found that by taking the horizon, pinching it between my fingers, and tipping it backward or forward, or a little to the side, I was able to expand its territory within the picture plane. I wanted this space — the space at the end of the deep and narrow pool — to become familial to me. I wanted to take discomfiting, transitional, in-between space and make it visible. This space only registers — optically — as space (as opposed to flat color) because of the figures (bodies or dories) passing through it. The horizon is visually defined in relationship to transition, to movement. The border is made not for passing through, but by passing through.

I sometimes take for granted the nature of the line between ocean and sky, between figure and ground. These edges are entire worlds unto themselves. The figures in these works are those of us on journeys through the in-between horizons. They are diligently going about the business of becoming themselves.

When everything feels upside down, or as though I am inside a deep and narrow pool, I think it’s good to remember that between being where I am and where I am heading is a place unto itself. The horizon is, after all, a remarkable place to be, because it exists while we pass through it.