EXPLORE CWELLS.COM
Through the exclusive use of line marker paint – the industrial medium used to define the limits, borders and boundaries of highway, road and urban structures which regulate vehicular or pedestrian movement; C.Wells has developed a painting practice akin in spirit to that of the topographer, executing ideas like a contemporary journeyman avid for information. Creatively itinerant and multi-disciplined, the line marker is used as a filter or a conceptual index to work towards an overall schema.
Auditing the history of line marking, beginning with its origins in Trenton, Michigan in 1911; the project is analogous to a sociocultural pursuit as much as one that is at home in the realm of art making; his work explores implications between the line marker and ideas of order and edicts. As a means of symbolic communication as well as an aesthetic force within the landscape, the line marker is thought of as an allegorical crest of urbanization – its history significant but its contemporary use and future possibilities just as compelling.
Exploring how the line marker is utilized today as a global and cross-cultural civic gesture to its metaphoric properties that can signify everything from wanderlust to pop culture; Wells’ emphasis is found in the line marker’s imageability as an emblematic code.
Since 1996, he has concurrently established a painting component (works on canvas and other surfaces), an ongoing photo-performance component (painting in situ), and a writing component (text works as a means to theorize and narrate his process). Historic notations have been developed in the work as a means to connect the painted art objects produced to the specific notion of painting-in-the-world.
For a complete context of the project and to situate its contribution to contemporary painting, please visit and explore: www.cwells.com. Essays by Mark Cheetham, Andrew Hunter, Shirley Madill and others, comprise an understanding of this project, now in its 20th year.
List of images:
2015, film still of SHERMAN (Sure, Man)
2012, PANOPTICON, line marker on canvas, 82" dia
2002, Archive/research image, Michigan Department of Transportation, Detroit
2011, "and after a while the ground became the vista..." line marker paint of wallpaper, UNION GALLERY, Queen's University
2010, Pentimento (black, yellow, yellow) line marker on canvas, Art Gallery of Windsor
2002, NO NINE TO FIVE, painting in situ, performance still, McMaster University
