Stratum #4

Edwin Pinkston lives in Ruston, Louisiana, where he taught painting and drawing at Louisiana Tech University from 1968 to 2004. He is an abstract painter. Pinkston intentionally limits his compositions to a square format because the shape pleases him and it gives him a consistent foundation on which to build his work. He contrasts a painterly application of bold colors and a largely geometric composition to draw a parallel to any number of hotly contested social issues. His work is a visual metaphor for how experience, memory, and the like heap on top of one another in a fairly random fashion. Pinkston focuses closely on the physical textures created by his treatment of paint; he builds a composition in layers reminiscent of geological records. Stratum #4 was acquired through a purchase award from the Forty-Fourth Annual Juried Competition.