Chris Whitefield is an artist and carpenter based in Bolinas, CA. He grew up in Bolinas, as well as parts of Mexico throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and returned to live permanently at the age of thirty.
In his younger days Whitefield created “atomic drawings”—whatever came out of his subconscious—for poet Joanne Kyger to use when she was editing the Bolinas Hearsay News. He studied briefly at California College of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland, then focused on lithography and drawing at the Instituto Allende y Bellas Arte in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, and later attended the University of New Mexico. It was there that he first encountered the work of Agnes Martin, an enduring influence. “I was studying drawing and printmaking at UNM in Albuquerque and the class always commenced with a fantastic lecture and slide show. I was completely moved and dumbstruck when I saw [Martin’s work]; it was the most powerful and at the same time the most simple drawing that I had ever seen. The influence of the piece, and her work in general, simmered inside of me for about 7 years, almost like it was cooking with my own creative ideas, then I started with my own ink line drawings about twelve to thirteen years ago. Agnes Martin really gave me my inspiration for this series of drawings, along with my childhood years living between Bolinas and different parts of Mexico in the 1970’s and 80’s,” says Whitefield.
Ultimately, Whitefield considers himself self-taught in the art he does today. His greatest influence for the stunningly tight line work of his intricate drawings comes from his skill as a carpenter. He builds off the first foundation lines, challenged by the tension between lines and space and exacting fit. Not allowing for mistakes, Whitefield draws in ink for both for his geometric work and figurative art.
He describes his line drawings as a seismographic record of how we are always in motion; breathing, heartbeat, mood, and overall state of mind create unavoidable fluctuations in hand-drawn lines. “My work as a carpenter along with Nature’s patterning influence my visual language. Permanent ink creates permanent fluctuations in every line, documenting my breath, heartbeat, mood, and state of mind, like a seismograph. Consistency of tools has been very important to my process, Micron pens and Canson 90 pound paper,” Whitefield has commented. His latest focus has been to draw as if it is a form of knitting by stacking alternating rows of open and closed gaps of line to create patterned drawings. Two of Whitefield’s drawings have been acquired by the Achenbach Graphic Arts Collection of the De Young Museum in San Francisco.