Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/thomas-williams-art_b_3405525.html
John Seed interviews Thomas Williams on the occasion of the exhibition The Bay Area School Painters at Thomas Williams Fine Art, London, on view through June 22, 2013. The show includes works by Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, David Park, Ernest Briggs, John Grillo, Joan Brown, Frank Lobdell, Nathan Oliveira, Manuel Neri, and Paul Wonner.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/hassel-smith-a-free-spiri_b_2545493.html
John Seed blogs about the painter Hassel Smith (1915-2007) on the occasion of an exhibition of Smith's work at Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco and the publication of a new monograph on the artist edited by Petra Giloy-Hirtz.
Seed writes: "Smith first gained notice as a representational painter in the 1940s: his works from that period have an energy and graphic insistence that predicts some of the qualities of the Bay Area Figurative style that his friend David Park would pioneer a few years later. In the 50's Smith -- who was very close to Clyfford Still -- developed the feisty calligraphic abstract paintings that earned him his reputation as an 'underground legend.' ...The peripatetic life that followed after Smith left Los Angeles -- he was back and forth between California and England for many years -- combined with his constant stylistic tinkering, meant that the art world never quite managed to get a read on Smith during his lifetime."
Link to Post:
http://www.artcritical.com/2012/05/06/david-park/
Bill Berkson reviews two biographies of painter David Park: David Park, Painter: Nothing Held Back by Helen Park Bigelow (Hudson Hills Press) and David Park: A Painter's Life by Nancy Boas (University of California Press).
Berkson writes that "Read in tandem, [the books] are distinct and complement each other perfectly. Helen Park Bigelow's is a family memoir, in which her father and the paintings of his that mean the most to her are central but not the only active characters... Her responses to the pictures are instinctive and often eloquent... Nancy Boas's book also is sympathetic, though more impersonal, a balanced and analytical account; her passion shows in how persuasively she argues for a wider recognition of Park's importance as more than the locally esteemed leader of the Bay Area Figuratives, which now in any case seems on the way."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/bakersfield-museum-of-art-san-francisco_b_1372810.html
John Seed reviews the exhibition Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, on view through May 27, 2012.
Seed notes that "the show pairs the work of some early Bay Area notables -- Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, William 'Theophilius' Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira and Paul Wonner -- with a selection of artists who have benefited from their examples. If there is one real lesson that Bay Area Figuration has taught American painters over time, it is that nothing should stop a painter from playing the range between painterly figuration and painterly abstraction."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/david-park-a-painters-life_b_1299560.html
John Seed reviews the new book David Park: A Painter's Life by Nancy Boas (University of California Press).
Seed writes: "A Painter's Life offers countless fascinating insights into Park and his development, including revelations about the artists who he was exposed to and influenced by early on. Who knew, for example, that 19-year-old Park had been present at a 1930 lunch given for the visiting French artist Henri Matisse?"
Seed also notes Boas' interesting idea that Park's figurative work was a "moral" reaction to the abstract paintings of Clyfford Still: "By committing himself to the depiction of the human figure, Park created a hybrid art that literally moved the abstract inventions of Clyfford Still, Park's antithesis, into the background where they provided a sense of tone and setting. [Boas suggests] that Still's romanticism and sense of 'nature ecstasy' forms the setting for Park's figure."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/joan-brown-this-kind-of-b_b_1003775.html
John Seed blogs about the painter Joan Brown and his experiences as her student.
Seed writes: "Brown, in her words and in her art, was uncompromisingly assertive. Her toughness didn't endear her to everyone, but over the long haul it was the quality that distanced her from a difficult childhood and moved her towards the visionary optimism that characterized her final works."
This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown is on view at The San Jose Museum of Art through March 11, 2012.
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/nathan-oliveira-reinventi_b_928567.html
John Seed writes about Nathan Oliveira's last works which will be on view at John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco from September 8 - October 22, 2011.
Seed notes: "In the last year and half of Oliveira's life, there were wonderful developments in the studio. 'The old Nathan came back,' says Joe Oliveira, 'the guy who wanted to be in the studio every day. He couldn't wait to get back in there; something new and beautiful was happening.' Starting with rich, abstract washes of color, Oliveira was again inspired to conjure up haunting, solitary figures."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/edith-park-truesdell-arti_b_867229.html
John Seed tells the little known story of Edith Park Truesdell (1888-1986) "a painter, a teacher, a writer and a poet." Truesdell, a contemporary of Georgia O'Keeffe, studied with Frank Weston Benson and Edmund C. Tarbell at the Boston Museum School in 1906. Her lifelong devotion to painting was an inspiration to her nephew San Francisco Bay Area Figurative painter David Park (1911-1960).
Seed quotes Helen Park Bigelow: "As with David... painting was always Edith's fierce, abiding engagement."
