Ian Summers

"My art has evolved tremendously since I've been living in Easton and up until then, I'd had so many themes, from Biblical themes, very narrative kind of paintings, and when I came here, I got very interested in people's faces…*again*…which is something I had done when I was a much younger artist. So I paint faces. I call them 'conjured faces.' These are faces I make up, if that's truly possible. How may possible combinations can there be with a couple of eyes, a nose, a mouth, a chin, ears, and some kind of hairstyle? Or maybe an eyebrow? Or a beard? Yet everybody looks a lot alike and everybody looks totally different. How is that possible? It's infinite. And we recognize people! So when people see some of these faces, they begin to say, 'I know who that is!' But they don't know who it is because *I* don't know who it is. They're not portraits in that sense. Now, starting on 9/11, 2001, I sat in front of the television for three months in a little room doing nothing but totally being mesmerized and shocked, but I needed to do things with my hands, and I started making little faces on index cards with India ink or with gouache. I was just painting people who were passing through the TV, *very* quickly. I see 'em. I got 'em, I'd draw 'em. They were wet, and one time I accidentally put a wet card down the wrong way on top of another card, and I had to peel it off. And I thought, 'This is a technique!' So my work now is about transfers; I paint them on smaller pads, maybe three feet tall, and while they're wet, I transfer them to big backgrounds, and that's all been done in Easton." 

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