Link to Post:
http://blog.art21.org/2013/04/08/new-kids-on-the-block-summer-wheat-and-her-flight-from-the-cowboy-space-gangsters/
Jacquelyn Gleisner profiles painter Summer Wheat.
Referring to Wheat's recent show at Valentine Gallery, Gleisner writes that "Given the context, the documentation of work in the Valentine show pertains to the daily maintenance of personhood—that is, grooming. Inverting the art historical formula of female bathers painted by male artists such as Bonnard and Picasso, Wheat made several large paintings of male bathers as well as objects like mirrors, toothbrushes, and combs sculpted out of paint. Tension arises when the palpable delight of the work’s execution confronts the grotesque rendering of the forms as in Kiss... In this painting the squishy embrace of two massive heads is memorably depicted, subject matter matching the heft of the haptic aspects of the work. Wheat gropes touchy subjects as the materials and forms are raucously upended."
Link to Post:
http://www.huntedprojects.com/2013/04/michielceulers.html
Steven Cox interviews painter Michiel Ceulers about his work and practice.
Asked about process, Ceulers comments: "What I was really fascinated about was just the idea of the image in it, that just because you go from the diagonals and then doubling it, you suddenly arrive at the whole idea of modernism through the grid. For me, it is more about the process rather than the final image, but yet everyone reads it and perceives it as an image despite it being abstract. I always think it is interesting, for me being a young painter, I am not scared about the politics in it, but I am interested in the possibilities of abstract painting because it is politically dead. It failed, it’s like the idea of Malevich going from the peasants to the black square then going back again. So there is not really much to say, but because of that there is a possibility to explore that and then you really move towards that idea of modernism being what it is and there is nothing more, and you are already at that point of 0 degrees, which I think is really interesting to work with."
Link to Post:
http://bombsite.com/articles/7134
Tabitha Piseno interviews painter Nabil Nahas on the occasion of the exhibition of new paintings at Sperone Westwater, New York, on view from April 5 - May 4, 2013.
Piseno writes: "Ranging widely from densely textured works on canvas formed with layers of an acrylic and pumice mixture on top of silicon molds to abstract representations of the native olive and cedar trees of Lebanon, Nahas’s work consistently oscillates between many aesthetic sensibilities, ultimately driven by his almost religious passion for abstraction."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/04/vince-contarino-march-2013.html
Zachary Keeting and Christoper Joy visit the studio of painter Vince Contarino.
Contarino remarks: "I feel more strongly about the structure of the paintings and how a painting is built versus the color… I have an idea of how I want a piece to feel, but as I'm working on a painting, I look for road signs in a way, I look for direction, I look to... identify things and try to create tension…"
Link to Post:
http://buddyofwork.com/2013/04/01/benjamin-king-studio-visit/
Henry Samelson visits the studio of painter Benjamin King.
Samelson writes that King's works "dig into metaphysical terrain, but are also firmly rooted in the materials and physical process of painting, not to mention the planet outside his studio."
Describing works in the studio, Samelson notes: "A larger canvas against another wall extends the metaphor of energy in a more subdued direction. In this work, a background of raw canvas forms an arc over several foregrounded mound shapes. The paint here is thinly applied with an economy that King likens to 'sword strokes.' The painting reminds me immediately of Milton Avery’s reductive approach to the landscape, only here the allusions to landscape maintain a coy ambiguity. The mounds, painted in different values of gray, huddle along the bottom edge of the canvas, inviting a number of readings, but also satisfying as abstractions without a necessary context. They seem at once monumental and minute, potentially referencing mountains from a distance or pebbles up close."
Link to Post:
http://studiocritical.blogspot.com/2013/04/brian-edmonds.html
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Brian Edmonds about his work and practice.
Edmonds remarks: "I am currently working on a series of panels ranging in size from 12 x 12 in. to 48 x 48 in. The hard surface lends itself to mark making and aggressive methods. The paintings are loosely based on maps, historical references, and the landscape... My current work includes primitive markings found on maps. I remember completing history assignments as a young boy, using crude symbols for mountains or singular marks held together by a horizontal line to form fencing. I began using these symbolic features about 15 years ago. I recently began reusing these forms... Abstract or not a sense of place is always the driving force behind the painting."
Link to Post:
http://figureground.ca/leslie-wayne/
Julia Schwartz conducts an in-depth interview with painter Leslie Wayne.
Wayne comments: "My relationship to landscape is really rooted in memory, in the light, colors and geography of the West. So here, in the middle of midtown Manhattan, I approach the subject more as an opportunity to depict visual manifestations of physical forces: compression, subduction, morphogenesis, rather than pictures of nature in the traditional sense. And many of the paintings are shaped in ways that accentuate movement and instability. In the large horizontal multi-paneled pictures (which were directly influenced by Elizabeth Murray and Mary Heilmann, by the way) I created a kind of pictorial space that, while far from illusionistic in terms of perspective, are nevertheless frontal compressions of movement in time and space. Generally read from left to right, they express the forces of moving water, shifting tectonic plates, and our impact on the environment. In the tall narrow vertical works, I reference Barnett Newman’s famous zip painting, Wild, isolating the gesture from its larger context by creating a kind of virtual core sample. So by eliminating traditional narrative as a mediator, I’m interested instead in creating an analogous experience to being in nature."
Link to Post:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/conversations/in-conversation-john-phillip-abbott-interviewed-by-cary-smith
Cary Smith interviews painter John Phillip Abbott about his work.
Abbott comments: "I’ll often begin painting with acrylic and brush, or spray paint. Referencing the grid, with stripes, dots, diamonds, etc. I know the 'sweet spot' will be arrived at when these layers, applied relatively quickly, will be overlapped with the perceived accurateness of the tape and slowness of it’s application. Eventually there is a zeroing in, and this is when a loss of time occurs and I find myself concerned only with the success of the image. In that moment, nothing else matters."
Link to Post:
http://www.burnaway.org/2013/03/please-be-clean-when-you-do-it-interview-with-jim-lee/
Ridley Howard interviews painter Jim Lee on the occasion of the exhibition Jim Lee: Please Be Clean When You Do It at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, on view through March 31, 2013.
Lee comments: "I need to work and not really know that I am making anything in particular. I guess that’s why I work on multiple pieces at the same time. It allows me to keep moving without focusing so much on the act of painting - in the end, I just want to make things. There shouldn’t be any hierarchy in my process. Oil paint is no more important than latex, and linen is no more important than a piece of plywood. When I paint in this manner, the pieces become more interesting to me…I lose track of what is actually occurring."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/03/sarah-walker-march-2013.html
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Sarah Walker.
Walker comments: "I'm trying to allow everything in the painting that's ever been there to still exist visually and compellingly, presently, all at the same time. So, the past in my paintings is always present in some way, and all their movements, and the habits of the paint, and what its done, all the histories are still there, and they're impacting what gets layered on top and woven into that. So that its not just one set of structures, or one narrative, or one history, but all these things together. and I try to strike a balance to where you can read each of them... at the same level of legibility."
