The Blind Swimmer » abstact expressionsim

Larry Poons @ Danese Gallery

Gordon Fraser — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:18:38 +0000

I went to Danese Gallery back in February to see the Larry Poons show. A friend of mine was just asking about the texture and application of paint that Poons uses in his latest paintings. His question awoke me from my slumber so here are some shots I took at the show. There are a couple of close ups where you can see there are both thin stain layers of acrylic underneath the thick impasto brushstrokes.

Tags: abstact expressionsim, Danese Gallery, thick impasto, texture, acrylic, Larry Poons

towering spaciousness

Gordon Fraser — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:25:26 +0000

We can’t really talk about colour without talking about and looking at Hans Hofmann. Here is a piece called Towering Spaciousness from the Brooklyn Museum. In this piece Hofmann uses both colour intervals and overlapping planes to create a sense of expansion and contraction in the painting. Each colour relates to every other colour in the painting, thereby determining its relative location in space within the painting. The result is that none of the planes sit in exactly same place in space. The rhythm and movement of your eye as it jumps from plane of colour to plane of colour, or we could say the expansion and contraction of the planes of colour, work to create the sense of an open towering spaciousness within the canvas. Hofmann called this idea, his “push-and-pull” theory, which he wrote about in the book Search for the Real. So, it is the movement of colour/the movement of the eye that creates the illusion of space in this painting, not scientific perspective, which is what Hofmann spent years teaching his students. For me, what’s really interesting, is that when I stand if front of a painting like this, not only do I see the towering spaciousness of the canvas but I can feel it in my body, it’s a viceral physical feeling, something I don’t feel in front of the best realist paintings with precise perspective.

Hans Hofmann (American, 1880–1966) / Towering Spaciousness / 1966. Oil on canvas / 84 1/4 x 50 in. (214 x 127 cm) / Brooklyn Museum, Gift of William Sachs, 68.51

Tags: color theory, Paint, Brooklyn, Spaciousness, abstract art, Museum

John DiPaolo

Gordon Fraser — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:42:58 +0000

“It’s not about picture making,” he [DiPaolo] explained, “you can do that better with a camera. Painting is about soul and that’s what people see in it more than anything.”

For the past thirty years John DiPaolo has painted lush non-representational canvases in his San Francisco studio, driven by a passion ignited when he was a young child. An accomplished draftsman capable of rendering with verisimilitude, he worked in a hard-edged pop style until graduate school before abandoning references to the outside world in favor of a deeper engagement with the act of painting. Since then DiPaolo has created a body of work drawn from his inner resources. Dipping beneath surface appearances, he taps into a creative force strong enough to compel him to return to his studio day after day, filled with anticipation for the aesthetic adventures that lie ahead. [Read more...]

www.dolbychadwickgallery.com

Tags: abstraction, enamel, Artist, dipaolo, oil painting, canvas