New Art from Turner Carroll includes work by
IAN INGRAM
"Self-Portrait"
ARTIST'S INFORMATION:
For nearly three years, Ian Ingram has spent a great deal of time looking at himself. Not that the 31-year-old artist is vain—he’s just been working on a series of self-portraits in charcoal and pastel. The drawings are tightly rendered, but rather than exuding a sense of realism, they take the viewer to a dreamlike place. “I may draw my face with intense detail and then surround it with elements from imagination,” he explains. In a boy and his bruegel (where’s my bike at?), for example, Ingram depicts himself wearing a hat formed from a Pieter Bruegel painting he saw while on a bike trip in Vienna.
The artist begins each new piece with a question in mind. As he starts drawing and something beautiful emerges, he says, the question begins to resolve itself. “The act of rendering is very cleanly meditative,” he states. “It allows for those musings to surface where they will.” Ingram is inspired by his travels around the world. His next destination is India, and although he says the resulting works may include a few self-portraits, the series is coming to an end. Expect something that breaks the mold from the up-and-coming artist in the near future. Ingram’s work is on view beginning September 16 at the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, NY, in a show called Re-presenting Representation VII. He is represented by Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. —Julie Osterman