One of the things I love to represent in photography is a sense of scale. So when I learned that the artist (and my longtime friend, Michael Kareken) was just finishing a large-scale painting I jumped at the chance to visit his studio. Entitled “Windshield” and measuring a whopping 10′ x 15′, it’s actually made of 16 individual paintings. Mike told me that he had originally planned to remove the white borders of each painting, so that the presentation would be more seamless, but in the end he decided to keep the borders because they provided an organizing principle for an otherwise chaotic view of a shattered car windshield.
We have several of Mike’s prints in our home, and as I was listening I suddenly recognized the theme that ran through all of his work, which is “organized chaos.” For years he has worked with drawing, printing, and painting highly active and detailed scenes, like tornadoes, salvage yards, scrap yards, and most recently landscapes of trees, which are slightly blurred, as if seen from a passing car window. Mike is an incredibly accurate renderer, but his pieces all have a strong emotional core, too, which makes his work compelling (and highly sought after).
Mike is a professor of painting and drawing at MCAD, and is represented by Groveland Gallery. You can see his beautiful work on his website.
