"Leave it on the Dance Floor" is a term among tango dancers describing the lesson they must learn to leave the passion between partners on the dance floor and to move on. It is also the theme of Seattle based artist Joseph Park's new still life paintings in which he challenges himself to not only master painting rigid visual effects such as sheen and reflection, facets and refraction, and digital manipulation, but also to link each work by exploring in the new painting something learned in or inspired by the old one. The swirling brown strokes that mimicked a rich wood grain on the hard surface of a table-vice in one picture led to a painting of intricate brown tree branches with smooth metallic limbs in another. Park's painting show us the intense relationship between process and content - a "partnership" that is difficult to leave behind, but what he takes to the next "relationship" extends and enriches his vision of the dance.

Mr. Park was born in Ottawa, Canada; graduated with a BA from Cornish College of the Arts and with an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He had a solo exhibition, Moon Beam Caress, at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2005), and his work is included in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, WA and the Tacoma Art Museum, WA