More graphite: James Busby at Stux

Wingspan, 2012

James Busby also uses graphite to create a monochromatic palette in his works. Busby's Wingspan: New Works exhibition up at Stux Gallery through March 17 shows many large, textured graphite panels. Wingspan, above, shows the artist manipulating the wet graphite over white gesso to create a beautifully textured surface. The lines are painstakingly hand tooled.

Disc 2, 2011

The artist's previous work in graphite was smaller, like the work above. Busby used a layer of graphite that he then ground down to a smooth sheen as a surface. In works like this, the colors that come out so clearly in this photograph are more subdued and vary depending on the angle you look at them. After moving to a larger studio, his work also got bigger. Cart, below, show him "framing" one of his polished graphite surfaces with a cart he found in this new studio, already covered in flecks of fiberglass. 

Cart, 2012

The texture of the fiberglass somehow migrates to Busby's large newer works. I greatly prefer the traces of the human hand left in the mark-making of works like 3 Panel, with its expansive 96 x 144 inch surface.

3 Panel, 2011