In “What is Painting” James Elkins explores the process of painting, how through personal experimentation and intimate interaction with the materials of pigments, oils and various tools the artist acquires the ability to magically transform strokes and smears of painting into tangible figures or scenes. The author likens this transformative process to the ancient occult science of alchemy and throughout the book he draws strikingly detailed parallels between the two practices. Painting as alchemy is an apt characterization of the work of Harold Klunder now on display at Winchester Galleries on Broad Street.
Confronted with such thick luscious oil, some of whose applications must take years to dry, there is no doubt that Klunder’s work is engaged in exploring the limits of its properties. Klunder’s evident alchemical mastery is at play on varied levels. He is not merely content to turn paint into something (lead into gold); he goes further capturing the transformative process in action. Looking at the thick tactile colour you get a sense of the paintings unfolding, a rich pigmented record of the paintings development. This is more than a fossilized record; it is as if you perceive its slow almost imperceptible transformation – imperceptible because it is on the time scale of a flower opening or even the movement of continents.
It is easy to be drawn into the ebb and flow of viscous colour, believing yourself to be in a purely abstract world -- however you soon realize you are being observed, as first an eye then an entire face looms out of the abstraction at you. Once you have adjusted to this more representational reading, other smaller figures can often be discerned adjacent to or even commingling with the larger faces. All is shifting and morphing within a shallow space as dense and tactile as the paint itself.You can suddenly find yourself submerging back into pure paint and abstraction. This is the working of a painter-alchemist’s mind.
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