By Innocence Bound: The Paintings of Mike Cockrill
31 GRAND, Brooklyn, October 15 - November 14, 2004 When we were young, the world seemed completely open to us. It was filled with promise, and we were excited - if uncertain - about what would happen. In many ways, the process of becoming a human being is similar to that of developing an artistic sensibility. We begin as clean slates and slowly, through trial and error, aided by an interiority of uninformed impulses, develop a sensibility which begins to resemble a set of convictions, allowing us to proceed within our purview and ultimately beyond. For these processes to develop, a degree of projection is needed, and art provides just such an outlet. The paintings in Mike Cockrill’s solo exhibition, Then Again, narrate a period of youth during which a variety of anonymous characters – in this case, mainly young girls - experience life in all its wonderful complexity. The entire duration of life is neither available to us through these images, nor does Cockrill consider it us