Liam Everett

UNTITLED (ICARIA)

2015
acrylic, enamel, alcohol, and salt on primed linen
77 x 60 inches

…I’m not adding just to have this surface to subtract. I’m trying to build a painting that is conclusive – that at some point arrives at this resolved state where I can recognize why it’s doing what it’s doing and I’m excited by it. It’s really at that point when there’s comfort that I begin to subtract paint and that’s why they get referred to as the “sanded” paintings because to subtract I sand. But I’ll use many different ways – alcohol, salt, steel wool, a power sander. — Liam Everett

The paintings of San Francisco-based Liam Everett are as much about erasure as they are about the colors and brushstrokes that make up their dynamic compositions. As the viewer’s eye travels around Untitled (Icaria), myriad marks and daubs of paint appear next to scrapes and washes, showing the ebb and flow cycle of Everett’s process. The piece offers up evidence of its own making and unmaking, and becomes a meditation on the passage of time.