About
Stephen Boocks creates works that combine painting and music, his two lifelong passions. Boocks began to study painting in his mid-teens at about the same time he began playing in rock bands. Although the punk aesthetic of his musical interests aligned with the Neo-Expressionist imagery he was exploring, his music and painting activities remained separate pursuits. At the Corcoran School of Art, Boocks started to work exclusively with objective imagery, though most works would include larger abstract sections as a way of reconciling his interests in both representational and non-objective painting. In 2010, Boocks began integrating his music and painting as a single practice. His use of grids provided both a rigid framework and the openness this non-objective work requires. These pieces translate the compositional structures employed by contemporary composers such as Brian Eno and Steve Reich, and sometimes his paintings literally serve as scores for his own music to accompany the visual elements of the work.
Statement
My art explores visual geometry, musical compositions, order, and randomness. I use grids as an underlying structure for each piece and typically start by assigning a system of “rules” which I then follow arbitrarily to develop a composition. This system follows the lead of minimalist composers Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley, who have been very influential in my art. For example, I may decide a painting should have three squares of each color per row and column, or that the columns will follow a color pattern of 2, 4, 6, 8, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. I play over these underlying structures with another, more stable system of dots that stabilize the work like a steady beat, or I paint flowing “tangles” which serve to either disrupt or flow along with the underlying pattern.
This process aims to create an interesting counterpoint for the viewer with all elements playing off one another like different instruments or sounds in a piece of music. I find that the rigidity one may associate with grids actually allows me a great deal of freedom to make multiple paintings that use the same rules but result in many very different outcomes. Many of these works are developed as musical compositions. They serve as graphic notation/scores for corresponding works in sound, and many of my titles reference lyrics of songs I admire.
I am fully committed to the handmade process in creating these works. Though straightedges and templates are used to draw the grids and circles, no other mechanical means are used. The mark making and layering of colors are essential to activating the surface. These elements heighten the sense of counterpoint more so than a purely mechanical process would. Evidence of the hand softens the first impression of a hard-edged geometry with the goal of inviting viewers into a more intimate dialogue of line, pattern, and hue.
February 2016
This process aims to create an interesting counterpoint for the viewer with all elements playing off one another like different instruments or sounds in a piece of music. I find that the rigidity one may associate with grids actually allows me a great deal of freedom to make multiple paintings that use the same rules but result in many very different outcomes. Many of these works are developed as musical compositions. They serve as graphic notation/scores for corresponding works in sound, and many of my titles reference lyrics of songs I admire.
I am fully committed to the handmade process in creating these works. Though straightedges and templates are used to draw the grids and circles, no other mechanical means are used. The mark making and layering of colors are essential to activating the surface. These elements heighten the sense of counterpoint more so than a purely mechanical process would. Evidence of the hand softens the first impression of a hard-edged geometry with the goal of inviting viewers into a more intimate dialogue of line, pattern, and hue.
February 2016
