Edition of 3
"This can become an occasion to ponder the nature of genius loci and its effect on artists of every sort. Interesting analogies can be found in literature — Don DeLillo and Phillip Roth, for instance, are inextricably linked with Manhattan, and a similar analogy could be made regarding the American South and William Faulkner. It’s a reminder that art arises within a particular milieu and — literally — is saturated with the ground from which it springs."
-PATRICIA MORA, PAPER CITY
The Hudson Valley Cloud series grew organically out of Kincaid’s meticulous dissection and reassembly of his own photographic images of clouds that had occupied him since the early 2000s. In a decided turn from the minimalist work of the 1990s and into 2001, Kincaid began to pull apart images of clouds he had photographed in west Texas, assembling a “digital palette” of shapes, forms, and colors, with which he would use to assemble a radically different composition. This process was a breakthrough for the artist, and the major method of operation in Kincaid’s studio going forward. He continued photographing clouds and skyscapes across the United States and expanded the visual range and scope of his imagery, insomuch that each body of cloud images varied significantly in color and composition depending upon the location of source imagery. One of the last of these bodies of work involved initial images that Kincaid had photographed in Los Angeles, which resulted in sublimely pastel wisps and puffballs, which were in fact, reflections of the layers of pollution the light passed through to reach the lens of his camera.
Upon completion of “L.A. Skies,” he considered this phase of his work finished, and shifted to an exploration of landscapes informed by the optical and chemical photographic processes of the 19th Century. However, a visit to Europe, where he has able to view both the work of Northern and Italian Renaissance artists, and the environments they had been created him, prompted Kincaid to return to this dissection and reassembly process of the sky, but with actual sections of these artists images instead of his own photographs. His attention was then further focused upon the works of the American Hudson River School, culminating in this expansive body of images.