MAKING A SPLASH

Chrissy Angliker makes a splash with a splatter and a slop, a stroke and a smear, using spoonfuls of confectionery-coloured acrylics on completed canvases that look more like Wayne Thiebaud’s palette tray than his paintings.

For her 2015 body of work, Angliker has moved from the previous “goopy” portraits and “rain-washed” scenes toward exploiting the impasto mark-making in depicting mobs at the beach–sunning, swimming, surfing–so that human bodies are lost in bodies of paint; the eye adjusting between recognizing the subject matter as the sunbathers or the splotches at any given time.

Chrissy Angliker, On Sand, 2015 | 120 x 140 cm | Acrylic, ink, house primer on canvas

The trails of paint–intersecting, interrupted, in one direction, and another, in all movement–show nothing is distinct, not even if what the viewer perceives is a copy of a copy of a copy, enlarged and abstracted further, or described as it was originally seen: in some cases, reflections, refraction, waves, mists, and more.

Works predominantly painted with pastel colours tend to neutralize the very physical application of paint onto the canvas, but not totally. The chaos, in both the swarms of people and paint plopped down, resists the notion of appreciating Angliker’s art as solely eye candy.

For an in-depth look into Angliker’s process and full-framed artworks, the book, Chrissy Angliker PAINT/ING/S is available in a limited edition of 500. From what I can tell online, the folio seems to compound one more idea traceable in Angliker’s art: armchair traveling reinterpreted; sunscreen not required!