Llyn Foulkes. The Lost Frontier

When Llyn Foulkes left art school, his paintings were raw; thickly built up, they often incorporated tar, burnt newspaper, and wood. Having recently returned from service in the US Army, he allowed death to overshadow his work and destruction to become a part of his practice—he dug and carved into his paintings, cut into them with an electric saw, and took a hammer to their surfaces. He has been known to demolish paintings he is unsatisfied with, even after they have been presented in exhibitions. The Lost Frontier (1997–2005) is a monumental masterpiece that was eight years in the making, but as the artist has said of his work, “nothing’s ever finished,” lamenting that at some point, the museum or gallery just takes it away from him.¹ He started The Lost Frontier after his second divorce, when he moved from Topanga Canyon to downtown Los Angeles. It presents a bleak Los Angeles landscape of astonishing dimension and texture created by layers of paint and the addition of found materials. Over its development, Foulkes turned on it with his saw and hammer, removing entire sections of the painting. A formal and psychological challenge, by the time Foulkes completed the work, its scale had greatly expanded but little of the original painting—or its plywood substrate—existed.