Reese Inman was born in Maine and lives in Boston, MA. A graduate of Harvard University and recipient of the David McCord arts award, Reese has studied painting, film, design and classical piano. Prior to concentrating her full energies on painting, she spent a decade working as a multimedia designer/programmer, creating educational media for technology, biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Reese is a 2004 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Diploma program and 2005 graduate of the same institution’s Fifth Year Certificate program, a two-time recipient of the Dana Pond Award in Painting (2004 & 2005), a 2005 recipient of the St. Botolph Club’s Grant-in-Aid Award. Reese is represented in New England by Gallery NAGA, Boston; in New Jersey by Simon Gallery, Morristown; and in Provincetown, MA by Kobalt Gallery. Her paintings are in the collections of institutions including Fidelity Investments, Simmons College, McKee Nelson and Price Waterhouse Coopers as well as many private collections.
Each painting begins inside the computer using a custom program Inman designed and authored. First, a computer algorithm creates data within a flexible ruleset that leaves many decisions up to the computer. Next, the program translates the data as colored dots within a grid, literally mapping the path and decisions of the algorithm to generate a computer image that is then printed to serve as the cartoon for the painting. After adhering the cartoon to a panel, she renders each colored dot as a paint droplet, strictly following the computer output while deliberately leaving the occasional error, as when two adjacent droplets merge together, as an acknowledgement of imperfection and humanity. Then, layers of paint are repeatedly built up and removed, using hand processes of painting and sanding which bring the artist’s touch and intuitive judgment into the process, such that the droplets become raised dots, surrounded by tiny rings of color. The most recent work explores successive filtering and rearranging of the same data set through several paintings.
Says Inman, “In contemporary experience, media-saturated and data-driven, human and computer decisions – and corresponding actions – are increasingly intertwined. The technological precision of the machine operates in conjunction with the errors and inflections of the individual humans who program the computers and enter the data. My paintings are metaphors for this blend of the human and the machine, combining the hands-off exactitude of computer programming with the hands-on discipline of painting, merging an overall sense of technological precision with the inflections and irregularities of the human hand.”
Selected Exhibitions
Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
2007 Kobalt Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2006 Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA
2006 Kobalt Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2005 Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ
2005 Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA
2004 Boon Gallery, Salem, MA
2004 Gallery 121, Boston, MA
2003 Gallery 108, Somerville, MA
Group
2007 Firehouse Gallery, Burlington, VT
2007 Kobalt Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2007 DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
2006 GASP, Brookline, MA
2006 Rhys Gallery, Boston, MA
2005 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Honors
2005 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Dana Pond Painting Award
2004 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Dana Pond Painting Award
2003 Boston Society of New and Emerging Artists
BSNEA Artist, 2003-2004
2003 Fitchburg Art Museum New England/New Talent
Finalist
1992 Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges
David McCord Arts Award
Education
2005 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Fifth Year Certificate – on year studio program
2004 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Diploma – four year intensive studio program
1992 Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges
A.B. cum laude in Visual and Environmental Studies – painting and film history
Bibliography
2006 Pounds, Kristen I. “Reese Inman: Ellipsis”. Art New England, Dec 2006/Jan 2007
2006 McQuaid, Cate. “The nighttime is the right time”. Boston Globe, Sept 28, 2006
2005 Millis, Christopher. “Summer flings: Newbury Street delivers”. Boston Phoenix, July arts
2005 Peterson, Tim. “Algorithm Map Series”. ArtsMEDIA Jan/Feb 2005