General 5 — ERIK KOELLE

Erik Koelle’s two- and three-dimensional, work explores the frailty and tenuousness of the human condition with both intractable materials such as plaster on wood as well as delicate watercolors on paper. His line drawings serve as the maquettes and inspirations for larger works including proposals for enormous public art projects. Koelle creates a space between the artists intention and the will of the material, with line drawing maquettes as the genesis for his plaster, watercolor and metal sculpture.

Koelle grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and lives in Los Angeles, California.

I always felt like there was something missing in my work. I then discovered using my left, non-dominant hand to sketch and draw. I had never used this reserve part of my body to make art, but once discovered, I felt I was putting down work that was original and surprisingly beautiful. There was a spontaneity, a uniqueness, an artistic quality to the line – things I usually only saw in others’ work and felt was missing in mine.

Now, fortunately, I can use either hand to draw, each hand affording unique characteristics. And for this abstract figurative series, I exclusively use my left hand for drawing while my right hand is used for the technical/mechanical aspects – like cutting paper and wire, or applying plaster to board. But for this series, the actual laying down of the creative is now in the proverbial hand(s) of the other.

“In the body of work entitled “Pulchritudinous” meaning beauty, Erik Koelle captures the essence of the human form in motion or at rest with an assured and energetic line in both his watercolor works and his large-scale images inscribed in plaster. Grounded in observation and rendered with a keen eye and a light touch, Koelle uses delicate washes of subtle color to bathe the figure in light and shadow in the more figurative works or to slightly obscure the figure in the whimsical abstracted images. The figure here is often a suggestion or a spirit, a vessel lightly moving through space unimpeded.

The very act of slicing through the malleable but dense material gives Koelle’s line of necessity an assertive and determined quality, as he assuredly recreates the figure by embedding it the soon to be immobile shell. Historical references to both the outlined cave paintings of animals on unyielding rock surface and Giacometti’s line drawings etched onto his irregular stucco studio wall come to mind. Like ancient scribes who carved clay tablets, Koelle inscribes his edgy lines into a soft surface working quickly against time, as the surface hardens, like a door slamming shut.

Often employing the technique of serial imagery invented by Claude Monet in the late nineteenth century and used by contemporary artists such as Joseph Albers and Andy Warhol, Koelle repeats an identical outlined figure (he projects the image onto the damp surface and traces it). In one series, this frontal figure is painted in a steely metallic gray against an even darker ground emerging from the darkness. A rich magenta figure in the middle is highlighted against a shimmering pastel pink and the beige figure on the right is backlit against a blinding white background. This series moves from dark to light and never repeats. In serial imagery the artist gives up the notion of a single masterpiece while having the freedom to create endless versions. Even though the central images are nearly identical, the thick impasto of the plaster in each is uniquely applied, creating ridges that catch and hold the light, energizing the entire background field.

Koelle’s masterful delineation of the fleshy human form with his versatile line is readily apparent in all forms of his work. He orchestrates line like a maestro, creating restless, tense lines when needed or looping linear lines whose arabesques are the very definition of the lightness of being.

Lance Esplund, noted author, sums up the power of the line. “Line is a rich metaphor for the artist. It denotes not only boundary, edge or contour, but is an agent for location, energy and growth. It is literally movement and change – life itself.” ”

Nancy Kay Turner
Pasadena, CA

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

BOOKS:

2018 | The Art of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse
1999 | Chicago Art Scene

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: