Natura Morte/Zen III / 2008 / Oil, alkyd on canvas / 58 x 59 inches / stephen haller gallery

Saw this exhibit the other week. From the press release:

Johnston creates pictures within pictures and strives for dimensionality through layers and composition. Multiple overlays of symbols in his work surface through multiple layers of translucent color. There is a mysterious luminosity in Johnston’s work; his paintings are noted for their lush gorgeous surfaces.

The double rings in the paintings are representational of binding relationships – a variant design of an ancient Asian symbol for fidelity or infinity. Johnston explores the impulse expressed in the notations and symbols of many cultures in an attempt to visually articulate the aching human desire to communicate an intensity of thought and feeling.

The new paintings also reveal the influence of the rarified yet organic construct that is a Zen garden – carefully organized symbols embodying a rigorous aesthetic.

Johnston says of his work: “Every painting is a relationship within a relationship within a relationship, and structured much more like a novel or a piece of music, than the incredible open-endedness of a painting on a picture plane.”

ron ehrlich / pale rain / 2007 / oil on panel / 48 x 48 inches / stephen haller gallery

Went to Stephen Haller Gallery the other day to see Gregory Johnston’s paintings, but was actually much more taken by Ron Ehrlich’s work hanging in the back of the gallery. His paintings had a physical presence lacking in the alkyd sheen finish of Gregory Johnston’s paintings.

Ron Ehrlich’s paintings combine the very American dynamic of action painting with the Japanese aesthetic of wood-fired Bizen ceramics. His application methods include throwing, pouring, brushing, scumbling and glazing. To achieve his remarkable surfaces, some glistening and others matte, he mixes recipes of oil, wax, lacquer, shellac, porcelain dust, and marble dust; and then turns a blowtorch on some areas to fuse the materials into a lustrous glazed finish. The resulting canvases, with their dense layers of oil paint and other media, are simultaneously energetic and tranquil.

Ehrlich’s palette leans toward water hues and earth tones: ultramarine, turquoise, peacock and sky blue; greens ranging from muted moss to sparkling emerald; sunny yellows, ochre, ivory, terracotta, and chalky white; the deep tones of rich soil. Broad horizontal bands of color in the under layers of his paintings are also suggestive of landscapes. The general impression, though, is of heavily textured, densely layered action painting. Often he creates an all-over grid-like texture with many thin vertical drips of color running down the canvas over thickly painted horizontal blocks in the under layers.