Nick Fagan
I wanted to create paintings with crocheted and woven blankets sourced from thrift stores and yard sales throughout the Eastern Seaboard. In this new body of work I combines vessel iconography with vivid textiles. I sourced blankets contain their own memories encoded with acts of warmth, comfort, and care. The absorbent role of the material is echoed by the depiction of vessels, an object of containment. After cutting, sewing, and rethreading blankets I composes self-portraits with painterly gesture. The colorful and curvaceous forms elevate ordinary materials to art objects. The rumination of each vessel replaces quotidian banality with an exalted individual history that ushers in the canon of portraiture. While in residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, I was dedicated to producing one painting per week that acted as a self-portrait. The final collection of works are imbued with the my weekly reflections. Weaving and sewing, processes traditionally attributed to craft, encourage me to abandon conventional roles of masculinity. The work introduces a cartoon-like liveliness where elements of humor find harmony with the artist’s spiritual handling of reused materials.
