GREGORY THIELKER

"My most recent paintings and drawings explore the sensation of seeing from a car while driving through the rain. I am fascinated with the constantly changing, yet particular landscapes seen from the car and also the way that the water on the windshield interacts with that landscape. The water creates a shifting lens for the way we see the environment- both highlights and obscures our viewing. Perspectives slip and compress, while shapes and colors merge into one another. I also work with relationships between surface and depth, between flatness and illusion. These works are born out of real experience and have a close relationship with the medium of painting- its fluidity, transparency, and capacity for layering, mixing, and blending. I draw upon a lineage of painters from Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter.

The paintings themselves are compiled from hundreds of photographs taken while driving in rainstorms with the windshield wipers turned off. While these moments are commonly ignored or deemed a necessary part of reaching our desired destination, they are powerfully charged with weather, light, and color- all experienced at a great velocity. This combination of speed and subdued calm, as the world goes past, creates a kind of transcendental moment that I hope to tap into with the fluidity of the painting medium."(gregory thielker @ my modern met)

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GREGORY THIELKER
EDUCATION
2005 Washington University, St. Louis, MO, Masters of Fine Arts in Painting
2002 Williams College, Williamstown, MA, Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors in Art History
2000 Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art, Brittany, France

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☁ GREGORY THIELKER