Peter Drake
Lee Tracy
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Drake, who lives in New York City and was born in 1957 in a nearby suburb, traces his interest in art to an eye operation when he was seven: “I could see the world clearly for the first time. I started drawing everything I saw, and I never stopped.” Vermeer was an influence later because of “his appreciation of the lens” and lens-related effects like depth of field. Another important influence was Italian fresco painting, from Giotto to Tiepolo. One of the things Drake says he’s trying to do is to combine these two traditions–to “create a hybrid between optics and monumentality.”
Drake’s technique is unusual: in all the paintings but one, he applies a solid field of color, then removes some of it with sandpaper to create a white sketch of his figures; later he adds color in layers. “It feels like you’re lighting the painting,” he says. His method creates tension between the rough surface and his “realistic” depictions of actual scenes, a tension that suggests the inevitable distancing effect of all media.
Patch not only copies illustrations but borrows cliches of representation. Yet his vision of the natural world individuates his schematic style, which resembles a woodcut. Untitled (Fox) is a study in three textures: the fox’s reddish-brown fur, the bark of the tree behind it, and the stringy grass below. All are painted in equal detail. Similarities in the three textures suggest not only ecological unity but the function of the fox’s coat as camouflage. By contrast the photo on which the painting is based personifies the animal, emphasizing its bared teeth to make this predator stand out from its surroundings. The fox is further differentiated from its environment by its coat, which is much more finely textured than the bark.
Two Suns shows two yellow orbs on a luminous yellow field seemingly drenched in light. The paintings of Gottlieb and Rothko come to mind, the former for his use of sun shapes and the latter for his mix of luminosity and depth. Tracy says that before this show she was reading about “gold, the invention of money, and the legend of El Dorado,” and these shapes have a suggestive iconic power similar to that of the abstract expressionists. With its vertical black bands on an orange field, Be recalls Barnett Newman, though Tracy’s lines are slightly tilted and far from even. The Way Things Are Hidden shows a light pink ladder ascending to a mysterious black shape, suggesting a spiritual quest. But the oddly curved line of the dark shape hints at a specific object rather than a universal symbol.
