On a Rainy Day...Gregory Thielker's Paintings (Not Photos) - 8 Total

Under the Unminding Sky

We love Gregory Thielker's art, not only because we can't believe they're actually paintings and not photographs, but also because he can transport us into another time and place. When we look at his paintings, Thielker wants us to experience those moments when we're driving in our car on a cold and rainy day. He wants us to remember the thoughts that go through our heads, how on one hand we feel safe and warm but on the other we're trying to navigate through an uncertain environment. It's a strong metaphor for life, isn't it?

Gregory Thielker on his art:
"My most recent paintings and drawings explore the sensation of seeing from a car while driving through the rain. I am fascinated with the constantly changing, yet particular landscapes seen from the car and also the way that the water on the windshield interacts with that landscape. The water creates a shifting lens for the way we see the environment- both highlights and obscures our viewing. Perspectives slip and compress, while shapes and colors merge into one another. I also work with relationships between surface and depth, between flatness and illusion. These works are born out of real experience and have a close relationship with the medium of painting- its fluidity, transparency, and capacity for layering, mixing, and blending. I draw upon a lineage of painters from Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter.

The paintings themselves are compiled from hundreds of photographs taken while driving in rainstorms with the windshield wipers turned off. While these moments are commonly ignored or deemed a necessary part of reaching our desired destination, they are powerfully charged with weather, light, and color- all experienced at a great velocity. This combination of speed and subdued calm, as the world goes past, creates a kind of transcendental moment that I hope to tap into with the fluidity of the painting medium."

Route 7

Cash Only

Mass Pike Toll

McGrath Highway

Coming to a Complete Stop

Harrison Avenue Study

Vortex

Gregory Thielker

Tags: art, artist, gregory, paintings, rainy, thielker

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Comment by jigar patel on July 31, 2009 at 10:44pm: some of the best collection....in this rainy season.great job....

Comment by Kristine Allen on July 28, 2009 at 2:25am: To Jim:
I get a feeling from these. Perhaps you don't but it brings up memories from when I first lived in the dorms in my freshman year of college, it reminds me of long rides home during a storm on the commute home and the panic of a storm. I love rain and I feel a lot from these paintings so I'm sorry if you feel like it's empty. Art is all about opinion but don't just say something isn't art.

I think it's BS for you even think you have a right to say that something isn't art. How about instead of saying something isn't art, how about saying that it's not an art that you can appreciate. Piet Mondrian is not an artist that I appreciate aesthetically but I appreciate the thought and process behind the work. Maybe it's something you should think about instead saying something is not art. Also think about the massive movement that happened with Marcel Duchamp introduced a found urinal asart and what that did to the art world. Not to mention his white and black painted canvases.

In other words, think about all of the different semantics included in a piece of art, instead of just feelings it gives you (or therefore lack of) and what it could mean to other people. Or is the art in it that it gives you no feeling, because honestly I could say that about still lifes a lot quicker than this. Damn fruit.

Comment by Kat Polkadot on July 27, 2009 at 11:42pm: Anna, Clearly they are not photo's!! Why do people on these comment threads always want to cry wolf?? I don't get it does it make you feel superior? I hate the photoshop comments all over the place I know most of the people that leave those comments want a rise from people but why discount good art or photography because you can not accomplish the same?? Makes me furious!! As for Matt and Jim please see this definition - pre·ten·tious \pri-ˈten(t)-shəs\ Function: adjective Etymology: French prétentieux, from prétention pretension, from Medieval Latin pretention-, pretentio, from Latin praetendere Date: 1832

1: characterized by pretension: as a: making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) b: expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature.
I think that about covers it for you both!!

Comment by Katharine Harrow on July 26, 2009 at 9:43pm: First of all, it's a relief to know that Matthew and Jim have decided on the criteria for "art". Now all the art historians and curators and artists can stop trying to define it. Thank goodness! Done!
Second, no one can definitively state that a picture "says nothing". You can state that it does not speak to you, but that is all.
It seems to me that you two have, sadly, missed the whole darn point of art, and expressing oneself. It is simply to create something beautiful, or meaningful, to channel a feeling or a thought or an idea. It can't be wrong or right.

Also, I quite like these pieces, and would love to know more about the techniques used to create them.

Comment by Matthew Rumph on July 26, 2009 at 1:06pm: I have to agree with Jim King. If he had done it once, it may have been capable of making some sort of statement, but the repetition makes tends towards gimmickry. No matter how good the technique, if you have nothing to say, then you will never create art.

Comment by Martin on July 26, 2009 at 5:15am: I love Jim's "by any other standard" comment, which loosely translates in to "by my own standard."

His suggestion to "turn his talent toward illustration until he has something to say" struck me as particularly funny. A clearer window in to his own pseudo-intellectual misunderstanding of art doesn't possibly exist.

Comment by boko on July 26, 2009 at 4:40am: These are phenomenal!

Comment by Searan DelaRose on July 25, 2009 at 9:18pm: What a load of pretentious buncombe Jim.

Comment by Jim King on July 24, 2009 at 6:17am: Interesting, but empty. Not art. Lacks any kind of feeling, any thought beyond "it looks cool." In terms of technique, these are impressive. By any other standard, they're definitely nothing special. He should maybe turn his talent toward illustration until he has something to say. By the way, I did not for a second think any of them were photographs. Close, but not quite. There are telltale signs.