Eva Lake, Richter Scale, 2007, 12" x 528" Portland painter, interviewer, blogger, and all-round art pro-activist, Eva Lake has created a truly wonderful piece called Richter Scale. It is comprised of 44 separate paintings, each 12" square, installed in a line. Each painting is made in oil, and employs a fairly simple color situation that is a blended array between two hues of extreme contrast with a horizontal seam across the middle of the panel. The top half and the bottom half modulate in opposite directions and meet in the center. Sounds pretty basic, but the effect far outweighs the ingredients. The center horizontal "fault line" becomes the site of a bombardment of high energy visual tension and release -- color at its expansive, anarchistic, psychedelic best -- vibrating and modulating unpredictably with utmost intensity across the wall and in the brain. As a metaphoric object and as a visual experience, Richter Scale is a glorious and ambitious assertion of the potency of painting.
