The Lightness of Winter
March 4th, 2022-April 10th 2022
The Lightness of Winter is a show of drawings, paintings and sculpture by S. Moss (aka musician Slink G Moss) celebrating the end of winter. Winter is beautiful and inspiring especially in this area. The show will feature botanical drawings, minimalist paintings, and sculptures of twigs and mirror. There will be a performance by multimedia duo Black Lake within the exhibition on March 11, 2022. Winter is not bad. It’s pure Lightness.
As someone close to Moss (we collaborate on a music and art project called Black Lake,) I have had the privilege of watching the evolution of his botanical drawings over the past dozen years. These simple poetic line drawings, in the tradition of the late fellow-Columbia County, NY artist, Ellsworth Kelly, sing to the viewer and capture moments in Moss’ everyday life much like diary entries.
I speak from first-hand experience due to the fact that I have upon many occasions been present when Moss draws something he finds on a hiking trail or in his environment, and can say unequivocally that these simple and lovely drawings capture the spirit and essence of his subject with elegance and precision. His daily practice has allowed Moss to exquisitely hone his eye-hand notation of the lines of nature. It has been such a pleasure to witness Moss’ drawings become more and more masterful over the years that I have known him.
Susan Jennings
Artist, musician and curator
A Minimalist Gesture: The line drawings of S. Moss
The minimalist gesture of simplicity can be beautiful and give rise to a kind of complexity, becoming one with the past, but all is new.
A blanket of snow.
A landscape.
A portrait.
A sheet of paper.
Frozen.
Suspended in time.
Life flows furiously through the roots under the frozen terrain, as does the artist when confronted with a blank canvas.
The first mark on a sheet of paper is like catching an image on the stark landscape. It is here where the minimalists control their desires to consume.
“The Lightness of Winter” is a series of Moss’ elegant portraits of nature, simple lines forming tension and form, creating a personal narrative. Presented are a series of line drawings, paintings, and stained-glass sculptures. These works draw from nature, minimalist philosophy and art history.
The minimalist pursuit manifests from an eastern meditative take on drawing. The philosophy, seamlessly translated into Minimalism is a disciplined approach to abstraction. Gestural elements are stripped away to reveal the objective, purely visual components.
Moss's drawing style embodies an automated process, a daily practice that beholds a zen philosophy which employs one to free the mind from the slavery of words and the constriction of logic. The artist and his works align with the minimalist construction and Zen philosophies, conceptually being an image of stillness but truly manifest in action. A daily practice, this discipline is at the root of activism and very much a punk aesthetic of “no more rules."
This series of works begins with the first mark and becomes lines drawn from nature, a portrait, still life, and abstraction. It is here where Moss’s line becomes The Lightness of Winter.
Michele Thursz, 2022