Randall Steeves’ encaustic paintings invites the viewer to reconsider the gesture of painting itself. Steeves canvases are thickly painted, scratched and gouged and explores the relationship between the photographic index and the painterly trace with a wry nod towards conceptual art practice. Randall describes this paintings, “ as tactile things with a material presence that, through the exploitation of the basic properties of paint, attempt to preserve action in order to emulate or manifest the intricacy of something real. In this regard, the work should echo both a human being and reality and, if successful, should serve to some degree to reveal an awareness of the awesome fact that anything exists at all”.
