Art and Antiques, December 2002
Excerpt from "Art's Innovative Messengers" by Edward M. Gomez

Post-modernist thinking, with its emphasis on how messages are shaped and conveyed through mass media, art, advertising and fashion, still dominates both art-making and academia. But in some ways, postmodernism's more polemical arguments seem less urgent in an era in which physical security is a worldwide concern and cross-cultural experiences are no longer novelties but the stuff of daily life.

Call it art's perennial yearning for the new and different - or, more precisely, a search for new ways of thinking about and making art - but even before recent, international, geopolitical convulsions, contemporary artists already were showing signs of responding to a fresh creative impulse. This current reflects a sensibility that prizes craftmanship, looks for ways to communicate with empathy and clarity, and often strives to do what art at its most compelling never has hesitated to do - tell stories.

The artists whose works are featured on the following pages forthrightly employ capable, inventive techniques in the service of stimulating ideas. Some of these artists are further along in their careers than others. All, however, are up-and-comers on America's broader art scene, and their works still are evolving in what just might turn out to be an early, post-postmodern moment.

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BRADY DOLLARHIDE: Oklahoma-born Brady Dollarhide now resides in Brooklyn, where artists' communities boasting artist-run galleries flourish. During his college years at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Florida, he worked for an art conservator, an experience that exposed him to a range of art materials and techniques. "I learned about what, physically, a painting can be," the 28-year-old artist says.

After making works shaped like heraldic shields, Dollarhide developed a painting method that contributes considerably to the expressive character of his finished pictures. First, he primes sheets of Baltic birch, then lays down washes of acrylic color to create broad, background skies that give his paintings an abstract air. He says he is "more meticulous" when he renders a work's central motif - usually a single tree. Finally, he paints a white stripe around each image, a reference to the borders of photographic prints. (He varnishes his paintings, too.)

"These images are inspired by specific people; each tree symbolically represents a particular personality," Dollarhide explains. Wistful, assertive and possibly romantic, his pictures are psychological portraits subtly masquerading as landscapes depicting trees tossed by strong winds or caught in nature's shifting light. Dollarhide tries to "capture a moment before it's gone - just when you sense an imminent change."

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