1. The Last Sunday in April, 30 x 30 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2021. 2. If I Were Gene, 30 x 30 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2021. 3. A Beautiful Expanse, 54 x 54 inches, Acrylic on Canvas Over Panel, 2014. 4. You Are Never Alone, 30 x 30 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2014. 5. If Richard Was Agnes, 30 x 30 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2014. 6. Painting For Sylvia, 60 x 44 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2010. 7. Clouds Aren’t Always White, 30 x 30 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2016. 8. What Memory Can’t Provide, 70 x 56 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2016.

“Blum’s paintings do reflect a sense of stillness, but the more the works reveal themselves, the more they rumble and hum.”

— Leah Ollman | Art Critic, Los Angeles Times

Utilizing a mixture of realism and minimalist abstraction, I create a narrative between pictorial reality, artistic process and formal composition. The result is a dialogue that can be seen as playful in its practice yet earnest in execution. In the paintings, I depict found, as well as made, objects that are at once still life, autobiographical record and instigators of compositional tension and examination. Paint swatch cards are rendered using trompe l'oeil, as is the painted tape holding the cards in place. Other 'incidental markings' such as more paint swatches, finger prints, and daubs of paint are placed in a gridded field comprised of hard edge linework and opaque quadrants of color. The seemingly casual, pin-board placement of objects are in reality carefully considered and strategically placed. These items are indicators of my creative process and formal elements informing the contrasts between realism and abstraction. The use of trompe l’oeil challenges the distinction between art and life and sheds light on the way in which representation is translated from experience. Like miniature paintings, these tangible bits of paper often mimic the abstract passages and gridded backgrounds found in the composition. By employing divergent styles to create a picture within a picture, my hope is that the viewer comes away from my work with the understanding that oppositions can exist harmoniously in the same space.

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