Selected Press

OLD TECHNIQUES BROUGHT TO LIGHT FROM TRENT TATE

Remember the name of native Austinite Trent Tate.

Trent Tate wants you to remember the name of a 19th-century Austinite, William Radam.

His current exhibit, "Trent Tate: Austin's Alchemist," at the glistening, new Volitant Gallery on Congress Avenue is suffused with painstakingly researched history, exquisite beauty and sublime wonder.

After thorough study of Radam — the Prussian immigrant who, in 1888, built the structure that houses the Volitant Gallery and claimed to have bottled lightning — Tate used his singular painting technique to channel Radam's heart and mysterious soul onto 21st-century canvases.

Tate's personal story is worth noting. Wanderlust inspired his travels as a young man through New Mexico and Montana, where he worked as a ranch hand and a fly-fishing guide. Soon after, Tate discovered a medieval manuscript describing the proper materials and techniques of painting in the ancient medium of egg tempera.

Some of Tate's best works in the exhibit are the luminescent "Orrery," "Fireflies" and "Nest" — all created with egg tempera painted on 35-inch-by-31-inch panels. Further, all of those paintings have been recreated on computer as limited editions, signed and numbered "new" works in a collaboration between Tate and San Antonio printmaker Gary Nichols.

"We felt like Austin needed this," said Volitant art director John Markey. "We're definitely interested in local artists, but we wanted to create something that you might find in Chelsea (in New York City) ... an international gallery with an Austin feel. The quality of the work and the gallery is definitely meant to be high-end."

It's by no coincidence that Tate also was chosen by the Austin Museum of Art to be a part of its recent "New Art in Austin: 22 to Watch" exhibit. Tate's work exhibits a refined artistic eye and the brush strokes of a master craftsman.

— V. MARC FORT (Austin American Statesman, Monday, May 15, 2006)

New Art From Austin

Trent Tate's paintings are showstoppers: unusual in medium and intriguing as images. He describes a single object on his panels — a cream-colored brick, a school of silvery fingerling fish and a toad — with egg tempera. The fragile medium, in which pigments are mixed with raw egg, pre-dates oil paints developed during the Renaissance. It's challenging and time-consuming, but in expert hands it results in unique, tenderly lush surfaces.

Levity describes a single brick that appears to float in midair. It casts a shadow and creates a reflection that is as incorporeal as the brick is tactile and solid. The hunched amphibian in Crouching Toad and the globe of silvery fish poised in Sagax Clupeus have a solemn beauty that enthralls the eye.

— PATRICIA C. JOHNSON (Houston Chronicle, Saturday, December 10, 2005)

TRENT TATE: NEW ART IN AUSTIN

A mystical aura surrounds Trent Tate's paintings. . .Egg tempera produces especially luminous qualities that make the artworks appear to glow from within the paintings' matte surfaces. Yet it also demands that an artist work with patience to build up the countless layers of paint that craft an image slowly. Tempera was nearly forgotten until the nineteenth century rediscovery of The Craftsman's Handbook (1437) by Cennino Cennini. Tate follows Cennini's methods, mixing pure pigment in water and egg yolk to make his own tempera. Tate looks with care at the art of masters of tempera (ranging from the Byzantine iconographers to Andrew Wyeth), and finds equal inspiration in old masters such as Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Jan Vermeer. Like Vermeer, Tate is attracted to the poetic qualities inherent within objects. . .Spiritual and iconic qualities unite as Tate brings his dreams to life alongside memories of the objects and creatures he has known.

— James Housefield (AUSTIN MUSEUM OF ART, exhibition catalogue, fall 2005)

TRENT TATE: LEVITY/GRAVITY

Like most artists inclined to figuration, Tate has to contend with Modernism’s picture plane and its emboldened claims to pictorial truth. In these paintings, he alters the colloquy between figure and ground, taking them from parable to parabolic waves (or were those particles?). As in earlier paintings, these new, iconophile works reassure us with a known object: “It’s a cannonball, a limestone, a lacustrine horse…” But as we relax into certainty, the image gives way to its trackless place. That space, neither Euclidean nor quantum, glows from within like luciferase.

— Alana Keres (ARTL!ES, spring 2004)

ART AS NECESSARY ANGEL

"So, Mom, just how far is infinity, anyway?" Trent Tate, age six, decides to break his lifelong silence with a question… "Not November," a painting in the sanctuary of the gallery, starts to get at the other infinity. It's true title – about 30 words long – describes the exorbitant vision that sometimes opens in us when we think we are asleep. Impersonal as a surveillance camera, but weirdly comprehensive – as if the dreaming eye becomes a spherical hand, holding the entire horizon. Quickly my scrutiny of the painting became looking through that eye; though it took a few minutes to realize that I was standing almost inside one of those 'matrices.' What tipped me off was the utterly implausible spatial configuration of the "Not November" horizon; though an unsurprising convexity bows the earth line, the sky falls back, billowing like a great transparent sail, which in turn makes the ground read as concave. And then it isn't, but then it is. I studied the brushwork, recognizing several tricks that created this mobius effect, which persisted, completely undeterred by my critique, until I withdrew my attention from the painting. Back in the room, I was glad to find the rest of the earth still flat. . .but ever so slightly more infinite.

— Mysti Easterwood (TRIBEZA, June 2003)

BEYOND PRETTY PICTURES

Today, Tate's evocative egg tempera paintings capture the beauty of the western terrain. He depicts in paint what Cormac McCarthy depicts so vividly in words, rendering everything from horses roaming the plains to eerily empty houses dotting deserted landscapes. He describes his work as observational realism, a way of seeing and portraying something that goes beyond the surface appearance. "Painting needs to be more than meets the eye," he says. . .which he explains by recounting a story from McCarthy's novel Suttree. . .a hobo was living in a boxcar and lit a cigarette just as a cold wind blew through the moving car. When he threw the match to the ground the car burst into flames. To save his life he jumped from the burning car and landed in a snowy landscape somewhere in Colorado. The hobo turned back to look at the fiery train racing through the snow and thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The hobo tells the story to a friend this way: I jumped for it and lit in a snowbank and what I'm going to tell you you'll think peculiar but it's the god's truth. That was in nineteen and thirty-one and if I live to be a hunnerd year old I don't think I'll ever see anything as pretty as that train on fire goin up that mountain and around the bend and them flames lightin up the snow and the trees and the night.

In his paintings, Tate hopes to capture a similar moment of intense vision, when a fleeting image is captured in time and a new view of the world is revealed.

— Bonnie Gangelhoff (SouthwestArt, September 2001)



	Home Paintings News Bio Selected Press Selected Exhibitions Contact Links
	Selected Press OLD TECHNIQUES BROUGHT TO LIGHT FROM TRENT TATE Remember the name of native Austinite Trent Tate. Trent Tate wants you to remember the name of a 19th-century Austinite, William Radam. His current exhibit, "Trent Tate: Austin's Alchemist," at the glistening, new Volitant Gallery on Congress Avenue is suffused with painstakingly researched history, exquisite beauty and sublime wonder. After thorough study of Radam — the Prussian immigrant who, in 1888, built the structure that houses the Volitant Gallery and claimed to have bottled lightning — Tate used his singular painting technique to channel Radam's heart and mysterious soul onto 21st-century canvases. Tate's personal story is worth noting. Wanderlust inspired his travels as a young man through New Mexico and Montana, where he worked as a ranch hand and a fly-fishing guide. Soon after, Tate discovered a medieval manuscript describing the proper materials and techniques of painting in the ancient medium of egg tempera. Some of Tate's best works in the exhibit are the luminescent "Orrery," "Fireflies" and "Nest" — all created with egg tempera painted on 35-inch-by-31-inch panels. Further, all of those paintings have been recreated on computer as limited editions, signed and numbered "new" works in a collaboration between Tate and San Antonio printmaker Gary Nichols. "We felt like Austin needed this," said Volitant art director John Markey. "We're definitely interested in local artists, but we wanted to create something that you might find in Chelsea (in New York City) ... an international gallery with an Austin feel. The quality of the work and the gallery is definitely meant to be high-end." It's by no coincidence that Tate also was chosen by the Austin Museum of Art to be a part of its recent "New Art in Austin: 22 to Watch" exhibit. Tate's work exhibits a refined artistic eye and the brush strokes of a master craftsman. — V. MARC FORT (Austin American Statesman, Monday, May 15, 2006) New Art From Austin Trent Tate's paintings are showstoppers: unusual in medium and intriguing as images. He describes a single object on his panels — a cream-colored brick, a school of silvery fingerling fish and a toad — with egg tempera. The fragile medium, in which pigments are mixed with raw egg, pre-dates oil paints developed during the Renaissance. It's challenging and time-consuming, but in expert hands it results in unique, tenderly lush surfaces. Levity describes a single brick that appears to float in midair. It casts a shadow and creates a reflection that is as incorporeal as the brick is tactile and solid. The hunched amphibian in Crouching Toad and the globe of silvery fish poised in Sagax Clupeus have a solemn beauty that enthralls the eye. — PATRICIA C. JOHNSON (Houston Chronicle, Saturday, December 10, 2005) TRENT TATE: NEW ART IN AUSTIN A mystical aura surrounds Trent Tate's paintings. . .Egg tempera produces especially luminous qualities that make the artworks appear to glow from within the paintings' matte surfaces. Yet it also demands that an artist work with patience to build up the countless layers of paint that craft an image slowly. Tempera was nearly forgotten until the nineteenth century rediscovery of The Craftsman's Handbook (1437) by Cennino Cennini. Tate follows Cennini's methods, mixing pure pigment in water and egg yolk to make his own tempera. Tate looks with care at the art of masters of tempera (ranging from the Byzantine iconographers to Andrew Wyeth), and finds equal inspiration in old masters such as Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Jan Vermeer. Like Vermeer, Tate is attracted to the poetic qualities inherent within objects. . .Spiritual and iconic qualities unite as Tate brings his dreams to life alongside memories of the objects and creatures he has known. — James Housefield (AUSTIN MUSEUM OF ART, exhibition catalogue, fall 2005) TRENT TATE: LEVITY/GRAVITY Like most artists inclined to figuration, Tate has to contend with Modernism’s picture plane and its emboldened claims to pictorial truth. In these paintings, he alters the colloquy between figure and ground, taking them from parable to parabolic waves (or were those particles?). As in earlier paintings, these new, iconophile works reassure us with a known object: “It’s a cannonball, a limestone, a lacustrine horse…” But as we relax into certainty, the image gives way to its trackless place. That space, neither Euclidean nor quantum, glows from within like luciferase. — Alana Keres (ARTL!ES, spring 2004) ART AS NECESSARY ANGEL "So, Mom, just how far is infinity, anyway?" Trent Tate, age six, decides to break his lifelong silence with a question… "Not November," a painting in the sanctuary of the gallery, starts to get at the other infinity. It's true title – about 30 words long – describes the exorbitant vision that sometimes opens in us when we think we are asleep. Impersonal as a surveillance camera, but weirdly comprehensive – as if the dreaming eye becomes a spherical hand, holding the entire horizon. Quickly my scrutiny of the painting became looking through that eye; though it took a few minutes to realize that I was standing almost inside one of those 'matrices.' What tipped me off was the utterly implausible spatial configuration of the "Not November" horizon; though an unsurprising convexity bows the earth line, the sky falls back, billowing like a great transparent sail, which in turn makes the ground read as concave. And then it isn't, but then it is. I studied the brushwork, recognizing several tricks that created this mobius effect, which persisted, completely undeterred by my critique, until I withdrew my attention from the painting. Back in the room, I was glad to find the rest of the earth still flat. . .but ever so slightly more infinite. — Mysti Easterwood (TRIBEZA, June 2003) BEYOND PRETTY PICTURES Today, Tate's evocative egg tempera paintings capture the beauty of the western terrain. He depicts in paint what Cormac McCarthy depicts so vividly in words, rendering everything from horses roaming the plains to eerily empty houses dotting deserted landscapes. He describes his work as observational realism, a way of seeing and portraying something that goes beyond the surface appearance. "Painting needs to be more than meets the eye," he says. . .which he explains by recounting a story from McCarthy's novel Suttree. . .a hobo was living in a boxcar and lit a cigarette just as a cold wind blew through the moving car. When he threw the match to the ground the car burst into flames. To save his life he jumped from the burning car and landed in a snowy landscape somewhere in Colorado. The hobo turned back to look at the fiery train racing through the snow and thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The hobo tells the story to a friend this way: I jumped for it and lit in a snowbank and what I'm going to tell you you'll think peculiar but it's the god's truth. That was in nineteen and thirty-one and if I live to be a hunnerd year old I don't think I'll ever see anything as pretty as that train on fire goin up that mountain and around the bend and them flames lightin up the snow and the trees and the night. In his paintings, Tate hopes to capture a similar moment of intense vision, when a fleeting image is captured in time and a new view of the world is revealed. — Bonnie Gangelhoff (SouthwestArt, September 2001)