Before painting for the Clark Island show, I researched the history of granite quarrying on the island. I was fascinated by the English, Scotts, Finns, and Italians, who used drills, wooden pegs and water, “feathers”, wedges and ultimately pneumatic tools to split the granite. This granite was hauled by horse on rails to barges and shipped. Inevitably there were grout piles of granite left over, and these angular remnants remain along the shore and in the fields. For this show I decided to use a geometric-realism style of
painting, fracturing the water, sky, and stone, like the fractured granite. I applied to the Clark Island landscape what a faceted gem does to light. I broke the water, sky, and
stone into geometric forms. The colors, forms, and details are familiar, but not traditional. Ùsing abstraction, I rendered the beach and coastlines of Clark Island
historic and fresh.
Jean Kigel
Jean Kigel Studio + Gallery 