Austine Wood Comarow: Paintings in Polarized Light

This book takes the reader to a place few artists have been- the birth of a completely new medium. Austine has devoted her life to perfecting what curator James Mann calls "a revolutionary new art... unique in the world." What he calls "revolutionary importance" in the art world are colorful figurative paintings created with no pigments whatsoever, and which change as the viewer interacts with the art. These remarkable works, presented here as series of still photographs, allow Austine to create images that change, as our environment does - the sunsets, seasons change, water flows. "I try to focus on the flow of experience rather than on static instant, says Austine. But these are not animations in the cinematic sense. They are instead paintings which ebb and flow. Nor are these psychedelic light effects. They are highly controlled images springing from the mind and hand of the artist. From her sketch book to finished art work, Austine takes us through her creative process and from her first experiments with polarized light art to her most recent museum works. The joy of this book is our ability to share Austine s process of discovery, her artistic vision, and her decades of devotion to originating and developing the unique and arresting new medium of visual art. James Mann s insightful monograph places this body of work into the perspective of a new movement beyond Post-modernism and into an era of reconstruction and synthesis.