Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Beach House (2011)

Beach House (2011) oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches

Vienna (2011)

Vienna (2011) oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

Syracuse (2011)

Syracuse (2011) oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches

Phillyscape (2011)

Phillyscape (2011) oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

Ab-Ex with Clyfford Still

The Abstract Expressionists were never a unified voice, and characterizations are invariably fluid, as each artist developed one or more signature styles.  Painters sought to avoid predefined limits and to express the greatest possible range of meaning through their own visual language ... by the mid-1940s Clyfford Still was developing his signature style of colour fields that join in jagged interfaces.
- Image and text from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 381
Clyfford Still "1957-D No.1" (1957) oil on canvas, 9 ft 5 in x 13 ft 3 in

Friday, January 13, 2012

Ab-Ex with Lee Krasner

This canvas presents a series of tightly packed forms and enclosed shapes, characteristic of the work of Krasner (1908-84).  An invigorating tension exists between the looseness of her expressive brushwork and rhythm, and the underlying sense of order and direction.
- Image and text from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 381
Lee Krasner -Another Storm (1963) oil on canvas, 7 ft 10 in x 14 ft 8 in

Ab-Ex with Joan Mitchell

The mural-sized paintings of Joan Mitchell (1926-92) echo the scale of other Abstract Expressionists.  Their most distinctive quality is their relationship to landscape, an amalgam [or blend] of Abstract Expressionist concepts and Impressionist and Post-Impressionist ones.  Here, four panels combine to create a flat image that oscillates between four separate views of one large panorama, the effect of which compels us ultimately to dismiss coherent landscape and immerse ourselves in the reality of color.
- Image and text from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 381
Joan Mitchell - Salut Tom (1979), oil on canvas, about 9 ft by 6 ft 6 in




Wednesday, January 11, 2012

New Body of Work (2011-present)

Since grad school, I have watched my work veer towards the non-objective. I can't explain it in words just yet, but Georges Braque (1882-1963) can. In 1955, he said:
"I have made a very great discovery - I no longer believe in anything. Objects do not exist for me except if there is a harmonious relationship between them, and also between them and myself. When one arrives at this harmony, one arrives at a space of intellectual nothingness. In this way, everything becomes possible, everything becomes right, and life is an eternal revelation. That is true poetry."
- quote from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 372

Photo taken inside studio on 1-11-2011