The clues to Lee Mullican’s latest paintings lie in his graphic work. Both his etchings and drawings contain a rich, variegated repertory of shapes that move playfully in and out of landscape space. This space is illusory and not two-dimensional, although the shapes that inhabit the space are a mixture of two and three dimensions.
This ambiguous use of space is repeated in the paintings with a few important differences occurring. A screen of one-inch vertical knife strokes, like hundreds of colored paper matches, covers nine-tenths of the canvas. Behind this screen, the shapes lie in repose without those deep probes into space found in the drawings. Unlike the paintings, the body of graphic work has whole series of interlocked, sensuous images which take on a vivacious, game-like appearance. These same shapes lose their forceful vitality when enlarged in the paintings and become mere space fillers. A tight, aloof, disengaged and formal quality replaces a free informal one. What begins as a romantic, i.e., surrealist, impulse is thus transformed or classicized through self-conscious tightening and re-working to the detriment of the finished paintings.
—James Monte
