The paintings in DRAFT SET are a direct exploration of formal elements and strategies that have emerged over time in my practice. I have long had a literal and pragmatic collaboration with materials, systems, and phenomena framed in relationship with everyday kinetic experience, building and composing tools and devices, signals and structures that operate to occupy and finetune their environment.

In these paintings, the operations turn inward. At a primary level, the paintings themselves are the site. This has been a trial-and-error process of composing, of deconstructing and reconstructing through the manipulation of oil paint and the phenomena of color, form and surface. They hold the history of their own evolution in the layers of additions and redactions. Like the apparent ancient and obsolete genetic material in our DNA that somehow secretly informs contemporary iterations, the scars from deleted and edited decisions within the history of the paintings inform the eventual outcomes.

The process evolves (sometimes quickly, most times not) until a sense of completeness emerges. The paintings tenuously hold together while at the same time, let go enough to infiltrate the environment – in this case, to be part the set. This installation of the paintings is the current draft of that set.

Jim Woodfill

James Woodfill is a 1980 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and has lived and worked in Kansas City since. As an interdisciplinary artist, his work is focused on direct experience through the composition of objects, occurrences and site. His artworks regularly blur boundaries in their execution, often merging with functional design. His installations bridge the fields of sculpture, painting and public art, and his work in the public realm has extended into education and curatorial projects, writings and numerous urban planning projects and studies.

Woodfill’s gallery installations have been widely recognized, including reviews in Art In America, Art Papers, The New Art Examiner, Hyperallergic, Art Slant and Sculpture Magazine. His public work has received numerous awards from the American Institute of Architects, and it has been included twice in the Americans for the Arts/Public Art Network annual “Year in Review.” His work has also been recognized by I.D. Magazine and by Art in America in their “Public Art in Review.” Woodfill currently holds the position of Professor & William T. Kemper Chair of Painting at the Kansas City Art Institute.