The Aaron Reichert Studio

Artist Statement

I admire Annemarie Busschers and Chuck Close. Their artwork demands your attention from fifty feet away, compelling you to step closer: really, really close.  There you will discover a universe of impatient details that brings your attention right to the surface of the painting. I want the person who views my work to feel overwhelmed, then curious about the soul before them, and the worlds moving beneath the surface. 

 

Choosing simple tools, (black and white acrylic paint, 4-6 brushes, a pallet knife and two jars of water) I abstract pliable skin into the fractured movement of line upon line, like the fascia that ties the body together: an ordered universe on the brink of chaos. The contours and fissures of the face are spared vanity (and color) and presented stark and unbridled; a human being in a quiet storm of solitude, void of setting and flourish.

 

To a portraitist, every face carries its own inspiration. Because portraiture is a sacred collaboration. I live in New Orleans, where creation and decay, the torrid pulse of humanity, crowds the air.  My inspiration comes from the struggles and mysteries that are the price of being born. And from the silent tragedies locked within each of us, the ultimate unknowability of The Other (and of The Self!).  Our faces reveal much. Yet we are such seasoned actors. What shines through - what is reflected?

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A Note on the Personal Works

The majority of these paintings are part of an ongoing series, entitled “Annunciation”.  The people portrayed live in New Orleans.  Most of them live in my neighborhood, the Irish Channel:  a small area of land from Jackson to Toledano and from Magazine to the Mississippi River.  Some of these residents have lived here their entire lives, some have never left.  Some can tell you a history of the place, of the people who remain, and those who have been lost - a patchwork of marriages and blood ties tracing from house to house, through decades and generations.  The Mississippi River is a fortified presence here, contained behind a 14-foot flood wall of heavy concrete that runs for more than a mile along Tchopitoulas. The waterline is captured within, access barred without proper credentials.  Beyond the wall, a Tremendous Industry is churning.  When the wind drifts up from the south, a cloud of petroleum vapor settles among these homes, carried over from the towering chemical storage tanks that crowd the Westbank.  The forlorn wailing of trains and barrages cuts through the air, through windows and through walls, as cargo is moved by night and by day.  Hulking masses of ships pass dream-like at the ends of streets, ephemeral above the flood wall and above our roofs.  Suddenly glimpsing one as it drifts across the sky, inevitable as the River itself, for a dizzying moment it feels as though the great vessel is not moving - but that you are.