Bio
Andrew Long has exhibited widely and is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most recently a Byrdcliffe Colony/Pollack-Krasner Fellowship and Millay Art Colony Fellow.
From 1990-2005, Long was artistic director of Johnson/Long Dance Company, which included multiple U.S. commissions, tours and residencies. He is a member of the International Art Critics Association and has written for Glasstire, Artlies, and Austin Chronicle.
Exhibitions & Awards
- Institute of Contemporary Art (London) — commissioned project
- Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) — commissioned project
- McMurtrey Gallery (Houston) — solo
- Conduit Gallery (Dallas) — solo
- Plus Gallery (Denver) — solo
- Dougherty Art Center (Austin) — solo
- Texas State University (San Marcos) — solo
- Austin Museum of Art triennial 20 to Watch, tour: Blue Star Arts Complex (San Antonio), Grace Museum (Abilene), Diverse Works (Houston)
- Texas Paint: Out of Abstraction — Arlington Museum, Kim Foster Gallery (New York), David Lusk Gallery (Memphis)
- New American Painting, Editions 42, 72, 84
Abstract & Bloom
The focus of my studio practice is no different from the practice of living—
a steady undoing, a constant letting go.
It turns in cycles thru stages of nothingness, growth, beauty, death—
like the flowers in the garden.
In the studio, I sit with the discomfort of not knowing.
Uncertainty is very unsettling.
Though if I step aside, if I loosen my grip,
curiosity takes the lead, and something unexpected begins to breathe.
Abstraction is a strange one.
Nothing is known. Hence a certain uncomfortability exist.
Lots of falling down in the moment.
The only way to make a painting is through it.
Paint is layered, stripped, and buried again.
A razor blade, belt sander, dremel—tools of erasure.
Raw pigment, binder, silt; spread with worn brushes, a putty knife, or simply poured.
Colors chosen by intuition, not reason, sometimes I even paint in the dark.
Process is painting as verb.
Improvisation is constant.
And then, almost without warning, a painting arrives—
a noun, a presence.
The cycle continues:
curiosity, procrastination, patience, attachment, chaos, arrival.
Again and again, I practice the art of undoing.
Preciousness is surrendered.
And though everything is impermanent,
there is a moment
and perhaps even a declaration—
the painting exist.