Peter Barrickman ‘Untitled Melodies’ at Green Gallery

Peter Barrickman is what many would call a painter’s painter, a label that means little on its face, but also suggests an abiding interest in the medium’s deeper possibilities. Even in its sloppiness the term implies a certain commitment to the potential of the medium beyond superficial results, and a reciprocity with other practitioners. His current exhibition “Untitled Melodies” at Green Gallery through March 1 is a gift to those painters and confirms that one artist’s faith in his internal pursuit might lead, with persistence, to another’s visual salvation.

The 12 paintings in the exhibition operate between representation and abstraction. This in itself isn’t notable as most painters working today migrate between these realms to some degree; however, Barrickman’s particular approach arrives at a seductive ambiguity that pushes each mode aside on its way to a space of its own. It’s a space beholden to neither and satisfying both. The works in the exhibition evolve from three basic natural conceits: winter landscapes, fulfillment centers, and fires.

It’s a rhetorical grab bag that would please both Charles Bukowski and Tristan Tzara, but his paintings don’t dwell on narrative long enough for the viewer to daydream. For instance, the painting Thaw smacks us with a cold and icy greeting only before quickly sinking into its own painterly story of unpredictable color choices and mark making flourishes. Sharp passages of dark and light rise and settle with the disturbed orderliness of a deck of playing cards dropped to the ground. Dashing angular marks of muted reds mix with irregular networks of blue cells over brown circles while the most perfectly strange blue-gray anchor mediates between the competing dimensions at the lower right.

Painted Adventures

Color is the most obvious tell when following the work from ice to corrugated boxes to fire. The burnt sienna and khaki palette of Shipping Center feels as cardboard-ey as Thaw feels icy. But again, the conceit dissolves rapidly as packages turn to boxes and boxes turn to shapes. The paintings accumulate mark-by-mark into a painted adventure of caramel-colored tiles that forgot their warehousey origin story as soon as they were mixed. But just as soon as the transformation from function to form completes, and the whole three-dimensional scene gives way to flatness, two boxes at the bottom of the composition appear to be supporting the brushstrokes as if they were a stack of boxes, and the whole thing returns back to our humdrum reality of Sprinter vans and packages again.

The fire paintings are the most naturally obscured of the lot, given the inherently abstract nature of the subject matter. Barrickman chooses to emphasize the sharpness and kinetic energy of his content even as he moves it into the elements of art. The marks of the painting are centered on the canvas, licking and flickering outward without ever quite touching the edges. This choice provides them with a different character than the Fulfillment and Ice paintings that is slightly counterintuitive given fire’s tendency to spread and consume space.

Subtle decisions like this pop up throughout the exhibition. “Untitled Melody,” like all Barrickman’s exhibitions is to be taken in slowly, letting each painting unfold as carefully as he made them. It’s worth taking the time to travel through his paintings’ eggshell surfaces and into their unpredictable marks, perfectly imperfect colors, and hiccupy compositions if only to finally realize, as if a prize for the endurance, that he’s produced all this magic across a spectrum of real things from fire to ice with the unnatural pale brown nothingness of the fulfillment center in the middle. All of it like some mystical diagram of a world caught between powerful eternal forces and frivolous local banalities. Pays to stay for the encore.

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Event Listings

February 18– February 24, 2024

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Sunday, February 18, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Free Day + Celebration: Vel Phillips’s 100th Birthday

Sunday, February 18, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

The Jewish Museum Milwaukee

“Coffee, Cookies, and Conversation: The Jewish World of Lithuania”

Monday, February 19, 12–1:15 p.m.

Woodland Pattern

“Everything Has a Story,” Work by Darlene Wesenberg Rzezotarski

Tuesday, February 20 – May 31, time TBD

Haggerty Museum of Art

Gallery Talk by Bill Tennessen

Wednesday, February 21, 11:00 a.m.

John Michael Kohler Art Center

“Breaking the News,” by Heather Courtney, Princess Hairston, Chelsea Hernandez, and Diane M Quon

Wednesday, February 21, 12–1:30 p.m. 

Charles Allis Museum of Art

Work from "Home" Wednesdays (Temporary Location)

Wednesday, February 21, 12–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Curator Reception and Tour: “50 Paintings”

Wednesday, February 21, 5:30–8 p.m.

MARN Art + Culture Hub

Junk in the Trunk

Thursday, February 22, 2–5 p.m.

John Michael Kohler Art Center

“Breaking the News,” by Heather Courtney, Princess Hairston, Chelsea Hernandez, and Diane M Quon

Wednesday, February 21, 6:30–8 p.m. 

Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD)

Gallery Tour, “Growing Resistance: Untold Stories of Milwaukee’s Community Guardians”

Thursday, February 22, 5– 7 p.m.

Mahogany Gallery and Cultural Center (Racine)

Black in Latin America Viewing & Discussion - Part 3 (Cuba: The Next Revolution)

Thursday, February 22, 6:30–8:30 p.m.

House of Rad

hRAD grillin' & chillin'

Friday, February 23, 5:30–9 p.m.

Union Art Gallery at UWM

Opening Reception, “51st Annual Juried Show”

Friday, February 23, 5–7 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio

Saturday, February 24, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Slow Art Saturday

Saturday, February 24, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Sharon Wilson Center for the Arts

Wisconsin Art Educators Association Youth Art Month presents: “Dream in Art”

(Awards ceremony for Southeastern, Wisconsin regional exhibition at 2:45 pm)

Saturday, February 24, 1–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-In Tour: Art by Artists of the African Diaspora

Saturday, February 24, 2–3 p.m.

Jazz Gallery For the Arts

Opening Reception: “Cities and Souls: Reflections on Urbanism”

Saturday, February 24, 3–5 p.m.

MARN Art + Culture Hub

Nirmal Raja Artist Panel

Saturday, February 24, 6–8 p.m.

Saint Kate, the Arts Hotel

AIR Time, Art & Studio Tour with AIR Anwar Floyd-Pruitt

Saturday, January 27, 6:30 pm..

VAR Gallery, Second Street

Abundance: through the Lens of Black Women, Panel Discussion,

Saturday, February 24th, 6–9 p.m.

Event Listings: February 11 – February 17, 2024

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Sunday, February 11, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tours: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Sunday, February 11, 2–3 p.m.

UWM Student Union Concourse

• Valentine’s Artist Fair
• Monday, February 12, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

MARN Art + Culture Hub

• Babbling Babes Galentines Moms' Night
• Tuesday, February 13, 6–8 p.m.

Boswell Books

• Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! in conversation with artist Nina Ghanbarzadeh
• Tuesday, February 13, 6:30 p.m.

Marian Art Gallery at Mount Mary University

• Melissa Cook Benson artist talk
• Thursday February 15, 5–6 p.m.

Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha

• Heyer Art Night
• Thursday, February 15, 5:30–7 p.m.

Marian Art Gallery at Mount Mary University

• Opening Reception, “Generations,”  Melissa Cook Benson
• Thursday February 15, 6–7 p.m.

MARN Art + Culture Hub

• Milwaukee Fashion Network
• Thursday, February 15, 6–8 p.m.

Waukesha Expo

• Art a la Cart's Handmade Market Craft & Art Fair
• Friday, February 17, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Grove Gallery

• Opening Reception: “Empathetic Objects,” Rachel Foster
• Friday, February 16, 5–9 p.m.

Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD)

• Gallery Tour & Zine Playshop
• Saturday, February 17, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Saturday, February 17, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Charles Allis Museum of Art

• Discover the Allis: Guided Tour
• Saturday, February 17, 11 a.m.–12 p.m.

Brookfield Central High School

• BC Rock’n Fine Arts Festival
• Saturday, February 17, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Gallery Talk: “50 Paintings”
• Saturday, February 17, 1–2 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Art by Artists of the African Diaspora
• Saturday, February 17, 2–3 p.m.

Mitchell Street Arts (MiSA)

• Opening Reception: Fidel Rodriguez
• Saturday, February 17 (evening)

Saint Kate, the Arts Hotel

• AIR Time, Art & Studio Tour with AIR Anwar Floyd-Pruitt
• Saturday, February 17, 6:30 p.m.