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For Geoffrey Hunter, the process of painting is archeological. This is not to say that the work does not fit a modern landscape. These works are a conglomeration of mistakes, erasures and forgotten gestures. The paintings are meant to have illusionary weight. As an archeologist, Mr. Hunter repeats a pattern of shapes and images in order to find the ruptures within. In archeology the faze often backward, the question of innovation is relative to both culture and loss. These paintings work within the boundary between progression and recovery, repetition and difference, loss and discovery. Hunter alternatively builds then scrapes away the surface of these works to reveal the archeological intent of painting, not as object or artifact, but a search for the possibility of art.
The tree is regarded as the “nerve ending” of the planet with the leaf as it's most fragile and ephemeral element. The repetition of the leaf motif underscores its importance as an icon of the natural world. In repainting the leaf as a motif the artist invites the viewer to look at the individual painting as well as examine the importance of the grid.
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