ART BY Harry Stanbridge      artist cv   Hummer Sunny Boy Nemesis Shuffle Bug Velvet Shift Round About Midnight Grid Sketch #2 Pink Poser Ice House Yellow Shift Blue Grid Grid Sketch #4       Grids and Grounds, the title of my upcoming exhibition alludes to the concept of process and perception in the making and viewing of paintings. Grids and Grounds are two elementary conventions used for the understanding of space and composition within the painting tradition (both modernist and post-modernist) and which I employ to engage the viewer in a consideration of the sublime and contemplative in the human experience. I have used various sources for the "Grounds", of these Works. In the earlier paintings from the Abundance series, Fish (salmon, steelhead, trout) were used sometimes as a pattern or Grid and other times following fluid more organic movement becoming more Ground. They are painted using the grisaille (gray tone under painting) technique and glazed over with many thin layers of rich dark color, the fish become a dark pulsing Ground. Being abstract but also delineating an image that represents a thing, the ground becomes a vehicle for intellectual interpretations or speculation, or at least leaves the possibility open for that type of reading. In other paintings I have used art historical sources such s Albrecht Durer's wood block prints, re-drawing the images in as the ground of the painting. The constant motif in all these works is the space/optical effect generated by the strategically located radiant coronas. Some on the surface and some buried in the fields of color, increase the sense of indeterminate space as the eye, like breath, moves in and out of the painting. There is no fixed point for the eye to rest, likewise the ground itself is in a constant state of flux. This movement though initially unsettling eventually resolves itself into the visual equivalent of a "contemplative" still point. Likewise the Grid paintings that are usually composed of painted lines and bands of various widths, define a ground that is visually interrupted by quartered squares or circles that imply the presence of a square that does not physically exist, but rather is optically rendered in the holistic processes of the brain. My method of painting the work and the structure within, share similarities with the contemplative process itself, and the effectiveness of the paining will be determined by the length of engagement by the viewer.