Geoff Tuck
Eeek!
September 21 - October 26, 2019Visitor Welcome Center presents Eeek! A collection of paintings, music and memories by our late friend Geoff Tuck, co-curated by Marcus Herse.
Painting is blue, red, yellow, and green. It is round and grey, small, and off centered. It is intelligent, and charmingly stupid. It is orange and still, and collects dust. Painting seems easy until you try. Paintings are gold, shimmering and sultry, and made of the ground we walk on. They are technology and moon landings delivered in crates bigger than doorways. They are your friend, your dog, and your dog’s bone. Painting is for kids and old folks and trash cans and fields filled with flowers; they are trampled on and nurtured, rescued and discarded and started over—and signed. Painting is a gift, a follow through, foreign and curious. Painting is a catastrophe—missing for years, dug up, tearful and relevant again. Painting—determined, mediocre and mysteriously flawed, perfect even. Painting is useful and unapologetic; it pretends. Painting tells you what to do, so you’ll get angry and say, Hey Painting! Stop telling me what to do! "No problem," painting says "stop looking at me." Painting is black and fabulous and far, it is the light on your lips, calm and exhausted, and calling you late night, I’m trying to sleep painting! Leave me alone! But painting is petty, and has already hung up.
Geoff Tuck was born in Anaheim CA, in January 1960. He went to high school in Pomona, and spent a couple of years at Mount San Antonio College and Pasadena City College. He also worked at the Federal Reserve, made jewelry, worked as a baker, and as a construction administrator. Although Geoff never received any formal training in the arts he was active from an early age as a self taught devotee of literature, music, and the visual arts. His enthusiasm led him to become an influential collector, thinker, writer, social practitioner and painter. In 2004 he joined the Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA) and served as their Board chairman in 2007 and 2008. In 2008 he started the blog Notes on Looking, publishing, his thoughts on contemporary art and music in Los Angeles. While running the blog from 2008-15 he wrote daily, reviewing exhibitions, documenting studio visits and conversations. Inspired by his activity with FOCA and the ever growing circle of artist friends and contacts he had developed, Geoff together with his husband David Richards started the Parkfield Retreat, an artist retreat on the V6 Ranch in the remote southeastern corner of Monterey County. About 200 artists joined the weekend long get togethers in the years from 2010-15 and five artists' books were published containing writing and artworks developed there. Having been together for 17 years, Geoff and David married in 2014, shortly after they had permanently moved to Parkfield. Until his untimely death in 2019, Geoff focused on his work as a painter in his outdoor studio. Geoff‘s work has been exhibited at JB Jurve, Dave Gallery and Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University. He also showed his work at an installation series in Berlin in 2013. He made many videos, and he collaborated on projects with other artists in both the U.S. and Europe. He is loved and sorely missed.
