This note accompanies “The Golden Age” exhibition located at the Baker Gallery of the Woodberry Forest School, showing January 10 - February 27, 2025.
Although I don’t know Philip Geiger well, and can’t speak to his teaching, as a fellow painter I can talk a bit about his work. To me, it often seems that painters who work from observation, or mostly from observation, espouse one of several approaches to the observation of color/light changes and to dealing with that great befuddler, time.
Observation of a particular place/form at a very particular time, thus focused on a very particular light quality. An emphasis on the momentary, on the transient, with a relatively short duration of time.
Sustained observation of a place/form - throughout many consecutive mornings, for example. The light changes a lot within that morning; the painter sees changes, experiences and then internalizes that flux. The resulting painting, is a conglomerate or distillation, of time in space.
Super-sustained observation of a place/form. Overall, a particular light quality doesn’t matter so much. Instead, the painter emphasizes a search through over time, like through a whole day, over many days. Constructed sort of like a reef, the resulting painting may be akin to a sculptural understanding of place/form.
To a degree, I suppose Geiger’s paintings embody characteristics of all these approaches. In Geiger’s recent works, the figures seem thoroughly embedded in a particular time as well as in, or of, a specific space - yet the paintings are clearly constructed over time. In a lyrical painting like Conversation from 2016, a cluster of people are centered in a broadly simple, yet dynamic, space. They create a form, held in a concentration of natural light, held in time. I think less of a “frozen moment” and more of a piece of amber.
Philip Geiger, Conversation, Oil on Panel, 24” x 29”