(Rahway, New Jersey, 1941 - )
1980-1982
Watercolor on paper
8 x 10 1/2 in. (20.3 x 26.7 cm)
Collection of the Akron Art Museum
Gift of The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, a National Gift program of Contemporary Art, is announced by the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
2009.30.50 a-g
These intimate, fragile drawings on loose leaf notebook paper activate space with the slightest of marks. As the artist states, “I’ve always tried to make everything—absolutely everything—count.” By reorienting the paper with its holes on top, Tuttle counters common associations with the material and allows the pattern of vertical lines to create a subtle rhythm over which he arranges vivid pulses of color. Of the artist’s tendency to create works in series, Herbert Vogel once remarked, “Tuttle is such an intellectual and cerebral person that he can’t get every idea he wants in one particular drawing. He has to go through as many as he can in order to express what he’s thinking. One drawing can’t contain all those ideas.” For the artist, the drawings are grouped to compose songs.