"When I see all of you here, I don't know what to say, " began Tom Uttech at his gallery opening on Saturday afternoon, February 12. "I hope I make it worth your time today." Tory Folliard brought back Uttech for his 8th solo show at her gallery over their 20 year realtionship for his exhibition "Tom Uttech: Boreal Conversations." An exhibition where he presents approximately two dozen paintings created within the last eighteen months. " Not one of the over 75 people crowded into Tory Folliard Gallery complained. They were impressed, intent and interested in asking questions of Uttech, who commands an extremely dedicated following in Milwaukee.
Born in Merrill, Wisconsin, Uttech now works from a home studio in Saukville. Previously the artist spent approximately 30 years teaching in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's art department working as a professor and after retiring, his occupation solely remains producing his own art full time. Creating the paintings that conjure the Canadian and Wisconsin Northwoods, which he loves and recalls from memory while using his imagination instead of pure reality throughout these landscapes. Uttech mentions he has given, "greater effort to add something mysterious rather than merely representational."
The excitement overflowed in these rooms where an art gallery, note an art gallery, was almost filled to capacity. In his hour gallery talk hosted by Folliard and while surveying the many familiar faces in front of him, Uttech eagerly conversed with an admiring audience and answered their questions with complete and honest candor:
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Could you speak to your migration paintings and the movement to quieter landscapes?
My migration paintings [paintings where the sky and scenery are filled with birds in flight] are absurdly busy and crazy to paint. There are a hundred cooper's hawks. And after a day where I paint [complete] only eight, I think I only painted eight birds today. I become so engrossed in the complication. My knees and legs burn [from standing so long], and I'm tired. And I think I only painted eight birds today. So, it feels good the next day to work on something quiet. That engrossment changes your frame of mind and the other paintings provide a respite and change from the complexity. I am somewhat unaware of this movement, but I have been interested in a dark undercurrent, and then putting magic and mystery into a lighter, pale painting. A pale painting that is still magical and mysterious.
How do you feel when you're painting your own paintings?
I don't know. Most of the time I feel terrible because I think they're not going well. One large painting can take me a year and a half and in the first year you feel like an abject failure. In the process, after painting a whole day, you get up the next morning and say it looks like crap. Then, maybe after a year, it may, or you think it may, look okay. And then after a year and a half, when its finished, you discover it looks good and you may actually like it. Then you give it away [to a gallery] and realize this is a terrible life.
Do you have any favorite paintings?
Yes, there are two kinds. I had probably three paintings where I knew immediately it was good, and the work went easy, and I finished them quickly, it went well. Then there are a few more that fought you for two or three years and give you trouble and even if they turn out well, you hate them. Those are memorable, too.
Many of these paintings in this exhibition sold. If you didn't care about demand, what would you paint?
I guess I wouldn't change anything because I like this. I like what I'm doing. I'm 68 years old. Not going to be here a long time. So I do what I enjoy doing most. I love the woods, being there alone, the mystery. You never know, really,
you never know. I try to paint it there, the mystery. Then that sense of mystery exists in your [the viewers] brain, so your create that mystery in your own mind.
Later this week online at Art Talk, the interview continues with Uttech discussing his process of painting the pictures, painting his frames, and then naming each picture. His exhibition "Tom Uttech: Boreal Conversations" continues at Tory FolliardGallery through April 9. The exhibition may be viewed online at www.toryfolliard.com
