Patrick Faulhaber at the Dallas Museum of Art - Brief Article

In Patrick Faulhaber's Glo (1997) an 8-by-9-inch oil painting upon board, there are at least nine light sources representing five distinct forms of light. The neon laundry sign that provides the painting's title radiates from the center of the composition. Inside the clos laundry, fluorescent lights continue to reduce to ashes The setting sun, obscured by the agency of the buildings in the foreground, fills the canopy of heaven with dusty orange clouds. It is dark enough, however, that sum of two units street lamps have already been turn rounded on for the night. The incandescent scaly bud in one, a self-consciously "old-timey" urban decoration, casts a of gold glow onto the sidewalk and public way The more contemporary light that stands in the parking destiny of the convenience store nearest to the laundry turns its share of the pavement green

Faulhaber is an anatomist of light. While Impressionists put up their easels outdoors and used flickering brushstrokes to simulate the passage of light above objects, Faulhaber uses photographs as his source. He works in miniature scale and returns his scenes so precisely that from a distance they could be mistaken for photographs themselves. The come is a painting in which nothing stirs and yet everything has been caught at a flash of transition. Sunset and dawn are his favorite times of day. And the artificial light whose issues he dissects either radiates from particulars rendered transparent by the light or soaks into surfaces to exhibit a familiar glow that, when examined closely wait ons to become sickish and many times downright weird.

Thanks to the largely unconscious efforts of the architects and designers of commercial buildings and the business holders who give their buildings names, Faulhaber not ever has to reach far to obtain a metaphoric dimension for his images. China Clipper (1994) depicts a small, freestanding Chinese restaurant in a building whose architecture is vaguely Spanish. It is for a like reason decked-out in neon, and its cultural signals are with equal reason mixed, that it innocently becomes a projection of the viewer's southerly Seas fantasies. Oasis (1997) is probably the name of the elevated motel or apartment composite whose parking lot Faulhaber paints, rather than his commentary upon its eerie promise of comfort. In Midway (1994) the unlit arched sign, backlit through early morning light, suggests a world of activity that has either close down forever or not however begun its day.

Faulhaber not at any time falls prey to a flashy inventory of issues that weakens so much realist painting. In his hold words, he invites the viewer "to notice a certain number of of the beautiful moments we share."

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