John Santoro - Mud Time: And Other Forces of Nature

new location 2251 W GRAND

The title of this show is inspired by the Joan Mitchell painting Mud Time painted in 1960 that I saw at SFMOMA at her retrospective 'Joan Mitchell' in 2021-22. Her title was derived from a Robert Frost poem written in 1934 where he describes both the effects of weather in April and his conflict between doing labor (in the case of the poem, chopping wood) and mankind's conflict between doing an activity (in my case painting) for pleasure or purpose of life, pay, or need, or simply put, the conflict between vocation and avocation. Forces of Nature furthers my inspiration with extreme weather both extraordinary in simple beauty or the dangerous, violent weather patterns that seem to erupt with consistency these days.