Exhibition: Delaware

Delaware

Waves, sand, sunshine. If only I could be so useful.

But I lack clear ideas. I lack clear ideas but I have persistence and occasional impulses and, perhaps clumsily, try to live out my belief in my special qualities. Clumsiness, and a vague, confused, overly complicated comprehension of ideas.

I thought I should have a plan. Stop waiting around for an accident, constantly laboring, my hands are growing broad, veiny, hands of a bricklayer, with weak lady-like wrists.

I put on blue gloves and blue is my favorite color. And I work and I try to not think. Laying down the paint is a job, the goal is to cover the surface. And when the gloves come off there's no reason for the paintings to refuse correction. And they have so much to be corrected about. Almost everything! And I will continue to correct them. But I know good luck when I see it.

Good luck: I wandered away from everything. Necessary to live the life of a wild woman. I feel guilty. I've got hurt feelings. Roy used to talk about Catholic paintings. On the knees of your soul? Might as well be useful. Scrub the floor. (Saul Bellow, Herzog)

So I go back to my bullies and bosses, know-it-alls, their certainty, authority, intensity. They are what my best paintings are. This is about editing. Someone is pounding for order, inside my head. I am wrapped in a blanket like an Indian. Just kidding. Only I want to be. If I am drawn to moody landscapes, why don't I just paint them? I allow myself to do so little. Clean, smooth, spare, cool, and hard. Impossible for a softy like me. But allow any more in and I'm telling you my slow sappy stories. I know better. In good paintings I rarely recognize my own signature or gesture. I think about science. If I forget that the painting is something that came from me, I become a better judge. This is impossible and untrue, but it helps. -JR, April 2012

 Julia Rommel was born in 1980 in Salisbury MD. She received her MFA from American University in Washington D.C. Selected exhibitions include West Street Gallery, NY; Curse of the Pharaohs, Cur. Shaun Krupa and Lizzie Wright, NY, Addicted to Highs and Lows, Cur. Rich Aldrich, Bortolami, NY. Reverie, Cur. Stephen Westfall, Zürcher Studio, NY. Delaware is her first solo show at Bureau.