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[Ellen Gallagher: Cutting]

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I grew up in New England

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and I live now between Rotterdam and New York.

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I'm actually a big bird watcher in Rotterdam
now

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because it's a great migratory space

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and I'm there with my binoculars,

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and hiking around there.

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And I'm looking very precisely

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at these fleeting glimpses of birds.

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You try to remember what you've seen,

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it's gone, and then you try to find it again.

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In the bird paintings,

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I start with a more precise drawing,

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and then from that drawing,

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I abstract the form.

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And it has to be abstract.

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It wouldn't work if it was really like

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a completely believable, detailed,

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precise rendering of the bird.

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I like radically cutting into the painting,

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inserting these paper birds,

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and then trying to figure out how to believe
in it.

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I'd have to somehow, then,

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weave them back into the paintings.

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The things that separates the planes

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are the incisions and the edges of the matter.

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Each separate layer of cutting or painting

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is visible

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and readable as an edge.

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It is interesting to see

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the way content surfaces over time,

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both in my mind and in the skin of the work.

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["Watery Ecstatic Series" (2001--2009)]

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The "Watery Ecstatic" works were more kind
of

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narrative--literary--relationship to the sea.

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The cut drawings were about

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bringing that biological surface

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into the form of the drawing.

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I used to get these air bubbles that annoyed
me.

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The slice I made when the paper was wet,

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just to release air bubbles,

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opened up and became this sort of

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cut that was fleshy.

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And it's funny, then,

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as you move into the "Watery Ecstatic" works

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to see that cut become so conscious.

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For me, I found that to be a surprise.

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Cutting a graphic edge from the earlier works

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into the newer works

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has been, I think, consistent.