Elliott Puckette

Elliott Puckette

Random Walk, 2021

Puckette’s committed and meticulous study of this particular formal strategy has been lifelong. Painting was considered in decline during her studies at Cooper Union, but Puckette stood by her minimalist logic, compelled by its potential. “It was always the line,” the artist has said, “I was completely compelled by the line from the get-go. It had more possibilities than form or shape or color.” This has remained Puckette’s primary visual staple since the occasion of her first exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery in 1993.

Born in 1967 in Lexington, KY, Elliott Puckette received her BFA from Cooper Union in New York in 1989. Her works are included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Public Library, the Fogg Museum, and the Huntsville Museum of Art.

The elegant simplicity of Puckette’s line belies its complex process. With brisk, confident gestures, the artist etches inlets into board washed with layers of gesso and ink. The colored washes create distinctive atmospheres in each work—brooding storm clouds of gray and tumultuous seas of dark purple. Puckette uses a razor blade to draw her arcs, carving out pathways instinctively with exquisite light touch. Later, she returns to deepen the furrows with cross-hatching—a labor-intensive process that inherently slows the line, subtracting it from the painting and delineating its negative space. 

In recent bodies of work, Puckette has developed her use of line by first rendering it three dimensions, making ephemeral sculptures out of wire. By translating the form of the maquette, Puckette flattens, and thus further abstracts, the line. As such, the works capture a silhouette of their three-dimensional references, a fleeting snapshot of perspective. 

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