MATTHEW MULLINS: PENTI MENTI

The title of New Mexican painter Matthew Mullins’ upcoming show, Penti Menti, is a play on the painting term pentimenti that refers to the visible traces of an artist’s process. “These traces can be layers of paint, the energy held in a juicy brushstroke, remnants of altered compositions or evidence of fixing mistakes,” Mullins says — a visual representation of the artist’s labor, vulnerability and the devotion of time. “Standing before a painting that is five hundred years old, we can still sense the artist’s spirit, presence and humanity from those rough, unpolished moments in the painting.”
 
Mullins’ oil paintings reflect this concept on an elemental scale, harmonizing the openness of landscape imagery with flat screens of geometric patterns. “The geologic marks and scars on the landscape are Nature’s pentimenti,” the artist says. “They are the accumulated effects of time and natural forces.”