James Bates

“Skipping Stones”
In memory of my brother John Bates

I also skipped stones when I was young. I remember how the quick stones defied gravity on the water’s surface for a few joyful seconds before disappearing forever. They never reached the horizon, the destination I had imagined for them, a climax that was always postponed.

Isn’t that what we do when we dare to begin a new painting, only on a much larger timescale, without knowing where the horizon lies? The only thing we truly know is that wherever it may be, or whether it even exists, everything would collapse if we ever actually reached it. That is why the search for the next throw has already begun, toward that distant place hidden within the infinitely vast chaotic masses of intertwined, torn color forms. Or is it even color at all? Perhaps it is some primal matter.

In any case, we pause in our tracks. The landscape we observe threatens to rot beneath our feet, and we fall down into whatever we have stepped in, filth or gold, or a swamp-like maelstrom, magical or threatening. All thanks to James Bates.

This is not for the faint-hearted in their endless search for quickly vanishing trends. This art tears us away from our bourgeois reference points and ruins our pretensions. Instead we are presented with a present stripped of fantasies, no nonsense, nothing dreamlike. Here we are given the essential, wrapped in the immediacy of the moment.

This is James Bates in his besieged pulpit, urging us to remain present while he wrestles with the meaningless empty canvases and transforms them into powerful exponential explosions of ultimate humanity, true humanity: Fury, Folly and Fecundity, anger, madness, and fertility.

David Olivant MA RCA.
Founder and President of Strata Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Professor Emeritus of California State University – Stanislaus.
Contributor to Art Ltd, Art Critical and Square Cylinder.