Artist Statement and Selected Resume: 

Trompe l'Oeil Painted Constructions

Artist Statement:

Objects have great power for me. Natural or made, they have silent lives and histories which are borne on their surfaces. They show growth and decay, use and wear, care and neglect, and they accumulate in my life and works as signs of memory and loss and beauty. They are evidence of who we were and are. There is also mystery just in the voiceless physical presence of an object; I believe it was Claes Oldenburg who once declared that the harder he looked at a thing, the more mysterious it became. I know the feeling.

I have to make things; I can't help it. I could use real objects to make assemblages, installations, or collages, but that doesn't seem enough. My basic technique of building elaborate relief constructions of Finnish birch plywood and painting them in trompe l'oeil fashion has its own deep satisfactions of process and problem-solving, but it also serves as a means of understanding the objects and creating the images I want to deal with. Trompe l'oeil ("fool the eye") often has been a gimmick for an artist to show off technical skills, a fairly shallow if entertaining enterprise, but its devices seem an appropriate response to my love of the visual world. (Perhaps "only God can make a tree," but I can make a pretty good stick.) The risk is that the piece may fall into simple-minded mimesis and nostalgia. I would hope that whatever technical skill I have might be seen as being in the service of my personal vision and not as an end in itself.

But the work remains largely about the joys of making and of seeing. I am still fascinated by the old simple idea of resemblance, the very first idea of art after tools and shelter: That an object fashioned of one material can take on the outward appearance and therefore some of the "reality" of another. (It is little wonder that art quickly became allied with magic.) In this intellectualized, issue-oriented and concept-driven art world, I hope the old idea can still find welcome. It often seems almost enough for me.

Ron Isaacs
September, 2003

Selected one-person exhibitions:

Heike Pickett Gallery, Versailles, Kentucky, 2009, 2001; Lexington, Kentucky, 1993.

Snyderman Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2007-08, 2003, 2001, 1999.

Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan, 2008, 2002, 1999, 1996, 1992, 1990, 1985.

Ruschman Gallery, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2006, 2003.

John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 2004, 1997, 1978.

Weston Art Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2003.

Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky, 1999 (retrospective).

Southern Ohio Museum, Portsmouth, Ohio, 2000, 1979.

West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, 1997.

Toni Birckhead Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1995, 1990.

Sazama Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 1992, 1989.

Headley-Whitney Museum, Lexington, Kentucky, 1991.

Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, 1989.

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1986.

Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, New York, 1985, 1982, 1980, 1978, 1977.

Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 1980; Deson-Zaks Gallery, 1974.

SElected public and corporate COLLECTIONS:

Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, Alabama.

Yeiser Art Center, Paducah, Kentucky.

University of Kentucky Fine Arts Library, Lexington, Kentucky.

Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee.