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6.29.2008

Your Turn: Color, Geometry and More


Thanks to those of you who responded yesterday and today to my invitation to send in links and images of your color-focused work. Below is some of what I've selected to show. I've placed the images in a visual narrative so that the work can speak for itself, but of course you know I'm putting my two cents in, too.
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(If you're coming to this post now, you are welcome to use the "Comments" section to share links to or pics of your work. And while we're getting all interactive, take a look at what artist and blogger J.T. Kirkland is proposing: "Artists 'Review' Artists"--a project in which you submit a work of yours for review and in return will have your work reviewed. J.T. has the details here. )
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Gary Petersen, Break-Up, 2007, acrylic on panel, 20x16 inches.
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I'm a fan of these two painters, above and below. Gary Petersen combines color and geometry in a way I find particularly appealing: It's hard edge but it doesn't slice you up. He works out of a studio at the Elizabeth Foundation in Manhattan. We showed together (along with scores of other artists) at a big, wonderful holiday show called "Punchbowl" at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn--and in fact, the picture above is the one in the show, so you can see it in situ.
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I've yet to meet Eva Lake, below, but we're buddies in the Blogosphere. The ambitious work below is from The Richter Scale, shown recently at Augen Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Visually, it's pretty quaky; you can feel the retinal techtonics.


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Eva Lake, installation of The Richter Scale, with a modular detail, below
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Ken Weathersby, whose work is shown below, is new to me. But perusing his resume, I can see that he shows regularly in New York--and that he's in the 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art at the National Academy Museum on Fifth Avenue, just across from the Met. (Congratulations on that, Ken. I'll be visiting the show soon and will make a point of seeking out your work.) Ken is interested in the inner-and-outer, the back-and-front, the skin and structure of paintings, which puts them in the approaching-sculpture category. Those two rectangles are set flush within the surface of the canvas.
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Ken Weathersby, 149 (GdP, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 14 inches. See more at www.kenweathersby.com


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Bob Barbera, Forward, acrylic on canvas; easel size. See more work on his blog Barbera Grid
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I'm digging the visual connections between and among these works--the crisp geometry, the rectangles, the palette, and the stripes that greate a resonant visual eye-hum. You folks have done a pretty good job of curating your own show here.


Above, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Yellow on Red, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 34 inches. See more at www.unutterable.org

Below, Donna Sensor Thomas, Autumn (Triangles), 2008, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36 inches. See more at www.embryonicthought.com


I love the transition between Thomas's quilt-like pattern and Tracy Helgeson's glowing structure, below, not only for the quilt-barn association, but because the angles, hues and shading have such strong affinities.




Tracy Helgeson, Leaning Gambrel, 2008, oil on birch panel, 30 x 24 inches
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I pulled this image from The Carrie Haddad Gallery website, but you can see more on Tracy's blog, which combines her art life with her family life, smack in rural upstate New York.
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There are two more affinities, below, with painters who are working square with shapes that tend as much toward the biomorphic as the geometric. The Flash construction of Robert Atwell's site, www.robertatwell.com, didn't allow me to pull images, but it it did let me pull the studio image from the homepage. Actually, it's for the better, as you get to see the relationships of many paintings to one another--and to the studio itself, which has its quirky touches of color (note the poles and pipes). I'm not sure where Atwell is from, but Elise Rugolo seems to be from Pittsburg by way of Wisconsin (things one infers from a resume). Her abstraction is a soupcon Fauvist, n'est ce pas?.
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Thanks for sharing, everyone!



Above, Robert Atwell, Studio View
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Below, Elise Rugolo, Thunderhead, 2008, flashe vinyl paint and collage on birch panel, 8 x 8 inches. See more on her website, www.eliserugolo.30art.com




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20 comments:

Donna Thomas said...

Joanne,

Here's my link: www.embryonicthought.com

Thanks for turning me on to so many great artists!

Donna

Tracy Helgeson said...

Great series of posts, Joanne!

My work is definitely about color, better in person of course:)

www.tracyhelgeson.com

Newer work can be seen on my blog.

Thanks!

Elise said...

Thanks for your great blog, Joanne. Living in Pittsburgh, I don't go to NYC as much as I'd like, but your site is the next best thing to visiting the galleries in person.

My website link: www.eliserugolo.30art.com

Elise Rugolo

* said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
* said...

Hi Joanne,

Thanks for the invitation--

www.kenweathersby.com

I'm not focused solely on color, as you'll see, but on playing the visual and optical against the literal physical presence of the canvas.

I like your blog and hope you'll take a look.

Eva said...

www.lovelake.org

All about color.
Thanks for this Joanne!

lookinaroundbob said...

Thanks for the look
http://paintself.blogspot.com/

Joanne Mattera said...

Hey, thanks, everyone.
These are great.
I'll post a selection over the next few days.
In the meantime, all y'all, browse the sites everyone has listed. There's some interesting work there.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Joanne, for the opportunity.


www.garypetersenart.com

Anonymous said...

If works by dead artists may be included, here is a link for one --
http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html

Anonymous said...

If works by dead artists may be included, here is a link for one --
color, color

Anonymous said...

Hmm... My work deals largely with structure and the structure is defined by color: http://unutterable.org

And love all the recent posts! Keep it up!

Anonymous said...

Joanne,

Great blog!
my link:
http://www.robertatwell.com

and my older more interactive one

http://www.dotonawalk.com


Thanks for all the reviews and images.

robert

Anonymous said...

Joanne, thanks for all your great posts and for this opportunity to share. I am looking forward to catching the OK harris show and whatever else I can this summer.
Also thanks to all the others who posted here: great work.

Joanne Mattera said...

Thanks, everyone, for sending links. I'll post pics this evening.

Meanwhile, thanks Vittorio, for your kind words. (For those of you who are not familiar with Vittorio, he curated a terrific show last year at this time, "Building Picturing" at The Painting Center on Greene Street.
Here's a link to the press release on the gallery website: http://thepaintingcenter.org/exhibitions/2007-exhibitions/building-picturing/

Nemastoma, I'm going to focus on living artists for this post, but I urge everyone to click onto the live link, "color, color" a few posts above this to see Eugene James Martin's work. The website covers his oeuvre better than one picture here can do. Take a look.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Joanne.

matthew langley said...

Joanne:
Thanks for your offer to highlight artworks - I'm looking forward to seeing a number of artists I've not heard of.

I really like your blog as well.

My website is at www.matthewlangley.com

Thanks

Matthew Langley

Sweetcake Enso said...

Hey, Joanna, these are really beautiful! And I really like the way that you are using your blog for a curated show. Always a pleasure coming here - Catherine

Anonymous said...

Hi Joanne. I love your sensibility and here's the link to my works, present and past (when I was an encaustic painter, 1970's- 1988).
www.myartspace.com/LouisePSloane
http://LouisePSloane.neoimages.net

Anonymous said...

www.henrybrown.com

...from On the Geometric Trail - Machine Learning