David Syre is not a painter. He’s certainly no watercolorist, at least not in a sense that most art schools would recognize.
For a visitor at Gallery Syre, the pleasure to be found in “Watercolors,” a new exhibition of Syre’s work, comes from experiencing what the artist accomplished by redefining the medium.
“Experiencing” is the right word here. Syre’s works are to be taken in rather than figured out.
As with a Rorschach inkblot, meaning can be imposed on a work, or a theme can be assigned to a particular exhibition after the fact. A recent Syre show was framed in part as his response to Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd — a moment in recent history that undoubtedly moved him. His new show, which opened April 2, features watercolors clearly inspired by the landscape around his newly acquired property in Tucson, Arizona.
But none of his works are a conscious expression of anything. And in that sense, Syre is not a painter.
“My painting is really not painting. It’s a meditation time,” Syre explains in a 6-minute video that plays on a big screen near the gallery entrance. “I create from my subconscious mind. I do not paint.”
Syre has been compared to the revolutionary cubists of a century ago, and to Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer and famous watercolorist John Singer Sargent, but it’s clear Syre does not attach himself to any movement or past artist.
“I do everything imaginable and possible to not be like anyone else,” he said.
Take a step back from the watercolors that line the gallery walls of Syre’s latest exhibit, and one thing stands out: The colors are in motion. Syre sets a blank sheet of paper on a flat surface, adds water and pigment with an eyedropper, then gets the color moving by tilting the paper or applying a blow-dryer.
“Traditional watercolor approaches are too slow to deal with my subconscious mind,” he said. “I need higher energy. I need more action.”
Sometimes, Syre’s subconscious leads him to create a recognizable image, as in the paintings “Cat Power,” “Coyote on the Run” and the whimsical “Moose Creating Music.” After the watercolors have dried, Syre adds shape and definition with a pen.
The flowing pigment that created the rocky spires in “Pinnacles” is arrested by lines from a fine-tipped marker that establish a jagged landscape. The pen’s work at the bottom of the painting suggests an inexact reflection in a body of water. Syre lines the sky above his dream landscape, too, as if the mountains were reverberating into the heavens.
The 60-plus works included in “Watercolors” were selected from the 350 to 400 Syre estimates he created over the past six months, both at home in Whatcom County and in Arizona. Syre, 81, is prolific, having completed nearly 900 paintings and drawings in 2021 alone.
“So many different images come from my subconscious mind that it’s necessary for me to have 20 to 60 pieces of art in process at the same time,” Syre said.
Viewed as a whole, the works in “Watercolors” present a full color palette, even though they were created during a gray Pacific Northwest autumn and an Arizona desert winter. Syre speaks of seeing beyond the surface and glimpsing the richly colorful “soul” of a landscape. But something else is going on here with all that color. It’s a response to the darkness in the world, and it might betray at least one conscious motivation in Syre’s work.
“When the pandemic came, it seems to have exposed deep, deep wounds in the soul of mankind,” Syre said. “If anything, it convinced me to paint in brighter colors.”
David Syre’s latest exhibition, “Watercolors,” shows through Aug. 27 at Gallery Syre, 465 W. Stuart Road, Bellingham.
Editor’s note: Syre is the sole owner of Cascadia Daily News.
