Abraham Cone (b. 1998) works from the poetic tension between the ground of painting, and the ground under his feet—summoning relational space through pictorial space. In the fusing of vegetable and mineral pigments with glues and oils, there is also a binding together of sacred friendships, and interspecies relations with the more than human.
Cone besets forms in pattern, and figures lightly graze one another amidst synchronized movement. His materials are often gathered and gleaned—desiccated plants accumulate into handmade papers; walnut hulls are fermented into inks; sandstone is mulled into paint. Fields, woods, and lakes are sites for solitude, platonic fellowship, and homoerotic encounter—in life as in image. Cone vaporously builds atmosphere layer upon layer with soft gestures according to his heart.