tsarkart: March 2015

3.22.2015

2015 Chester Arnold, "Mad Abundance" review -

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3/12/15:
Review of Chester Arnold's show, "Mad Abundance" at the Catherine Clark Gallery, SF

Chester Arnold's newest show, "Mad Abundance" is rich, deep and wide. As one collector who attended the opening mentions, "It seems sparser than previous shows but no less full."

The canvases are filled with palpable & allegorical narratives.
The surfaces are rich with texture and filled with symbolic objects. The viewer looks over brick walls, climbs ladders, looks into mines, walks up wide seemingly littered steps, and is brought face-to-face with a volcano erupting with fiery hot lava. We are even struck by lightening -- literally and figuratively. In each of the paintings, we are confronted, simply and most directly -- with nature, and with ourselves. Arnold's paintings are complex worlds woven and constructed in ways that lead us to grand conclusions.
In this show, the theme of the "prospector" resurfaces. It is this writer's opinion that the prospectors and mines are worth attention as they are narrative paintings which, according to the artist, "...has been a peripheral interest ever since the early Eighties, taking different shapes as I developed different skills to apply to the process. The name Prospector was used for my little book of poems from the show of 2008, which had in it the signal work of that name..."

We are reminded of discovery of new excavations. We become the toiling worker resting from a weary day at the mines. We find solace in the journey and challenges of everyday travails.