John Mills
Approaching painting by way of mark making, John Mills presents a series of compelling paintings for his first exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, HIGH on SIGNS. In these paintings, gestural lines sinuate around, sometimes emerging into vague shapes, other times into obscure forms, creating a rich schema of marks, symbols and colors - self-contained and relating to each other within the boundaries of the canvas.
Originating from intuitive freeform drawings and emanating from his meditations, the paintings are a translation of these drawings that have been further reflected upon by analyzing the intentions behind his original gestures, while expanding selected forms, and construing into the paintings meaningful colors and additional layers. The paintings materialize from this process until Mills feels a harmony is established. Additional elements, which might subvert this harmony, are sometimes introduced. However, they only serve to generate greater meaning for Mills in the painting as a whole. The marks on the canvases whisper reflective notions in our thoughts while the forms allude to familiar objects in our imagination. The many elements in Mills’ canvases collude, inviting a view into the subconscious as personal interpretations and unique understandings are subtly elicited.
Kio Griffith
In the meditative balance of figuration and abstraction, John Mills engages mark making with new visual playing fields, an agile order of painted space and the ground it roots itself in. Colorful forms and gestural linework bleed into one another creating compositions of meandering romantic terminuses defying gravity over muted white ground, void but determined.
...
Michael Shaw
John Mill's abstractions are light on density; there's typically more white or off-white backgrounf space than foreground imagery. But what initially may come off as faint and/or ineffectual quickly becomes experientially complex.
...
David Pagel
New abstractions by John Mills deliver giddy, mischievous fun
Bare-bones efficiency and wondrous luxury mate in John Mills’ new paintings, which are some of the most casual mischief to have come out of Los Angeles in some time. At Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Santa Monica, “High on Signs” fills three rooms and a hallway with 20 paintings that are easy to approach and hard to tear yourself away from.
...
AS: When I look at your paintings I imagine some of the marks are made from felt tip pens, is that something you use in your drawings?
JM: Most of my paintings are based on prior ink drawings. For a long time I used black ink on paper, then I discovered coloured markers and that opened up the process because then I could start drawing with colour as a means to create composition and think about how shapes and colours interact on the initial drawing surface. It was a revelation, but I have been doing this now for a long time. So the painted marks reference prior marks that I made in a drawing process. Sometimes they’re mediated to appear almost precisely how they were originally in the drawing and sometimes I allow the paint to be thicker or barely there at all. I diverge from that script often by using the tactility of the paint, how paint behaves differently to ink.
...