Randy Colosky’s Optimist Series are visual biographies that use simple line formations to elucidate the intricate personal history of the artist. Previously working in labor intensive and visually complex forms, Colosky reduces his practice to minimal and succinct gestures that quietly and confidently summarize the artist’s life to date.
The series is grounded in colorful line works that float solidly in negative space. Having worked as a house painter, the background of the works are akin to the drop clothes the artist used to protect the spaces he was painting in. Like in his Self Portraits series, the clothes become echoes of his process - their paint drips, oily gesso, and fingerprints signify moments, mistakes, and residue of experience. The collection of marks transcend their meaning and, in turn, serve as visual indicators of time, maturity, and progress.
The lines are his paths of experience, following the twists, turns, and returns of life. Colors are tied to memories, line work is reminiscent of building and contracting jobs, the bleeding gesso becomes musical distortion from his time as a guitarist - the culmination of these gestures are climactic of the artist’s totality, a visual summation of his life.
