Colors Passing Through Us

                            Untitled, Blue GreenDeep    65x61inches. Oil on Linen 2018  

                                                                       

Luminous :: José Heerkens

José Heerkens    Luminous Square XII, 2009  70x70 cm, oil on linen

José Heerkens lives and works in Zeeland, NB, a village in the southeast of The Netherlands.  She is fascinated by space, by light, by rhythym and color.  Her non-objective paintings and drawings are elegant explorations and discoveries, reflective of the environment.

José Heerkens     April Studio   2010

"Today is a beautiful Sunday, silent and sunny.  Spring has started very slowly this year.  The photo shows the east side, the windows are on the northside.  The total space is about 110 square meters."

José Heerkens   Color Study, 2009  30x20 cm,  colored pencil on paper

In her own words:

"I have a fascination for the endlessness of the space of the landscape (which) forms the basis of my work.  As a child, I looked at the rhythym of the trees, the colors and forms of the ploughed fields, the water in the ditches and listened to how the people talked and saw how they built and worked.  I think the need to understand life is the first step on the way to art.

José Heerkens  Written Colours, II, 2010  150x200cm, oil on linen

"In my work line is always an important means to visualize space.  Lines form and lead space toward rhythmic constructions.  I search for the life and human on one side, and the geometry, the universal standard, on the other side; space as silence and emptiness on one side, and completeness and perfection on the other side.  There is a constant dialogue between construction and intuition.  I need them both in my effort to understand.

José Heerkens Passing Colours IV, 2009  30x30cm, oil on linen

"Colour is a whole world.  Colour is light, space, energy, movement, and I strive towards a space where these qualities, in all clarity, meet.

José Heerkens   Reality of Light, IV, 2010  120x120cm, oil on linen

"The painting becomes a place where light and space seek and form each other.  In several series I leave the linen unpainted so the colour and the material of the pure linen is part of the painting.

José Heerkens   Written Colours, I  2010   150x200cm, oil on linen

"I work on series at the same time so that they develop side by side, simultaneously.  Sometimes a series goes on for years.  Some of my newest work is titled, 'Written Colours'.  These paintings show a new step in my work".


José Heerkens studied at Koninklijke Academie voor Kunst en Vormgeving, s-Hertogenbosch (Noord Brabant).  She has also had educational travels in Iceland and the Westman Islands, Singapore, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Greece, Malaysia and the United States.

José Heerkens   Reality of Light III, 2009  120x120cm oil on linen

Formeel 2010, an exhibitoion with Cecilia Vissers, opens on May 21 in Museum Waterland in Pumerend (NH).


Thanks, José

Out of Neutral :: PENELOPE JONES, JOSHUA FERRY

Joshua Ferry     Friendship. 2009 Acrylic and Wax on Canvas. 14 X 18 inches.

"An inquiry into color can take you just about anywhere".  So says David Batchelor in his book Chromophobia, his main premise being resistance to the argument that there exists in Western culture and intellectualism a fear of color relegating hue to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, and the cosmetic.   

I am not afraid. As an artist whose work exists primarily within the black and white extremes of the spectrum (...black being the achromatic color value of minimum lightness or maximum darkness, one extreme of the neutral gray series, the opposite being white...), that may sound a bit unconvincing.  But remember the lessons from Color Theory 101: primary colors are necessary to create those neutrals.  It's what makes the color wheel go round...

Penelope Jones      Orange Gate   5x4.5 inches, Casein

Penelope Jones and Joshua Ferry create paintings with an emphasis on color, structure and materials, their highly worked surfaces imbuing a sense of both strength and immense sensitivity.  They make works of passion, and purpose. They are not afraid. 

 JOSHUA FERRY

I saw Joshua Ferry's paintings at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art biennial exhibition in 2008.  His dynamic use of simple imagery and color are understated, clear and powerful. Ferry creates his paintings with a focus on physical process and materials, sometimes laced with political reference, which leads him into his work.

Joshua Ferry      I Will Follow. 2007 Acrylic on Canvas. 44 X 26 inches.

"This painting started as a list of words such as; walk, skip, jump, trip, stumble, etc... Words relating to basic body movements. Then I started erasing the words with blocks of color- ultimately becoming interested in the stack of colors. Seeming too rigid, I painted over a few of them free-hand."

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, and growing up in New Hampshire and Maine, Ferry is the youngest of four brothers.  He has lived in New Jersey for over 12 years with his wife, Karen, and still returns to Maine during the summers. He holds an MFA from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts and a BFA from the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine where he studied with James Cambronne and Johnnie Winona Ross.  He has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, and has worked as a studio assistant to both Donald Sultan and Bruce Robbins in New York.

Joshua Ferry  Casket. 2004 Oil, Acrylic, Alkyd Resin and Wax on Canvas. 50 X 42 inches.

Ferry received an Honorable Mention for his work in the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s 2008 Biennial and has also been exhibited at Coleman Burke Gallery, NYC , the Mercer Gallery in New York, the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and in the Portland Museum of Art 2005 Biennial.

 Joshua Ferry    Pros and Cons, 2007 is 16 X 20 inches.   

"This painting started as a grey grid.  Then, I painted color crosses into each square.  I was thinking about alter cloths, quilts, and religious banners.  Later, I thought of the crosses as plus signs and responded by painting minus signs over them."

In his own words:

"My paintings are constructed with many layers of applied and sanded paint. Making use of words, maps, flags, and found Internet photos, the imagery is relatively simple, graphically bold, and sometimes political. In addition, my paintings are about paint and exploring the line between abstraction and representation. My best paintings force me to embark on an investigative journey rather than simply depict an idea. Ultimately, I like to be surprised by my work.

Joshua Ferry Delegates 2005, Oil, Acrylic, Alkyd Resin and Wax on Canvas, 60 X 36 inches.

"In 2005, I decided to make a painting of the Maine state flag after seeing an exhibit at the Maine State Museum that showcased old Maine flags from past wars. I was imagining what it would be like if my home state of Maine was a modern day war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan. When I finished the flag image, I decided to list the names of Maine artists that had influenced me during my formative years- A way to pay homage to my art upbringing in Maine. The numbers signify important dates in my life; 71 birth, 87 moved to Maine from New Hampshire, 97 left Maine for New Jersey, 05 is the date of the painting.

  Joshua Ferry         Cross. 2007 Acrylic on Canvas. 14 X 18 inches

"Most recently, I've been working on paintings that are composed of a grid of squares with crosses in them.  Many layers and much sanding.

Joshua Ferry  Basilica Study Orange 1  2010

"The first seed of this format was Pros and Cons from 2007.  In the most recent paintings, the crosses are all the same color."

PENELOPE JONES

I met Penelope Jones in the 90's at Maine College of Art and we have been good friends for a long time.  Her pure abstraction pat­terns emerge from the cre­ative use of wide-ranging mate­ri­als includ­ing casein, resin, clay, silk rib­bon and printed paper. Jones' work, combining formalist interest in light, color, and surface with an attention to the evocative qualities of paint, reveals a process both disciplined and intimate. Her geometric abstractions are disarmingly personal.

 Penelope Jones    Collage #7  from Regenerations   12x11 inches, 2009

Born in Ithaca, NY in 1961, Jones holds a BFA from Maine College of Art and an MFA in painting from Cornell University.  She has been a Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture at Bates College in Lewiston, ME for 12 years. She has exhibited her work nationally, including the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH;  Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL and in Maine at Zero Station, Portland;The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport and the Portland Museum of Art.  She is represented by Susan Maasch Fine Art  in Portland.  Jones resides with her husband, Paul Sarvis, and children in Portland, ME.

 Penelope Jones    Installation, Bates College Museum of Art

In her own words:

"When  paint, I have a need to be both precise and spontaneous in my mark-making -- loving hard-edged lines and structures, while at the same time attracted to the playful and at times happy accidents that occur in moving paint around.  Combining these two near opposite qualities, and finding the right balance between them often drives the work in unanticipated directions.

"My source material for form and content is varied.  I am drawn to designs found in architectural details, decorative tiles, Renaissance paintings and ornamental designs from many cultures. In particular, I have been interested in designs from Islamic architecture and art. I find these designs beautiful and ingenius in their use of shape variation, geometry and repetition.

 Penelope Jones  Untitled,  15x 22 inches  oil on paper

"Along with a unity of organization, color is extremely important to my work; my color decisions are often informed bty natural phenomena such as the play of light and color within cloud formations, or the eeffect of weather on the landscape.

Penelope Jones    Collage #5, from Regenerations 12x11 inches, 2009

"Though painting and collage are quite different, the process of manipulating the surface becomes very much related and is the reason I am so attracted to both mediums.

"Last year I worked with collage to create my recent project titled Regenerations.  The project was shown at the Susan Maasch Gallery in Portland last October.  It comprised nine collage works on paper and was co-sponsored by a faculty grant from Bates College. For this project, I gave myself a challenge to work on a larger scale, and to dismantle finished paintings that I was attached to. As I started cutting these paintings—re-arranging and combining them in new order—I felt a sense of liberation and fully embraced the project.  To let go of my attachment while reusing (honoring, in a sense) my history; to regenerate from what has come before. 

Penelope Jones    Collage #8, from Regenerations,    12x11 inches, 2009
"This project gave me a deeper appreciation for collage as a negotiation between desire and response to the limits and suggestions of the found material. With collage I enjoy the process of cutting, pasting and being able to make changes easily.  I also like how found materials can inform the work in ways that cannot be anticipated.

Penelope Jones  Untitled,   19x17 oil on paper

"Collage has rich history from the Cubists on. I have had longstanding interest in the work of such artists as Kurt Schwitters, Ann Ryan, and Robert Rauchenberg —important pioneers in collage history. Because my painting has been so preoccupied with the play between surface, depth, and geometric planes, it excites me to revisit collage with its embrace of the superimposed plane."

Thanks, Penelope.

Thanks Joshua.

Color as it Happens :: Steven Alexander and Willy Bo Richardson

Color as light and form. My own conclusions fall within a spectrum of black and white, and geometric shape - an architecture that I find astonishingly complete, yet in which viewers often suspect other color is lurking.  This is not so: the repetitive striations of my drawings are strictly monochromatic.  It is an illusion, and an example of how the color we see is very personal, defined by an accumulation of associations, thoughts and memory - as well as wavelength.

Aside from my own aesthetic priorities,  as an artist I am continually moved by the power of a full spectrum - what actually happens between colors, and that transformation at the hands of a sensitive, skilled colorist.  Here are two I know, both experienced, both who use color deftly and in very different ways but within a shared language.

                              Steven Alexander installation, The World at Large, Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Housto

STEVEN ALEXANDER
Running into Steven Alexander -- his eloquent work and words, and sensitive, generous nature -- has been very special.  Steven makes abstract paintings characterized by luminous color, sensuous surfaces and simple geometric configurations.  He is an Associate Professor of Art at Marywood University, and has been Artist in Residence at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy and Visiting Artist/Professor of Art at Parsons School of Design in New York, Marywood University/France, Anjou & Paris, and Austin Community College, Austin, Texas.  Steven Alexander is represented by Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Houston, Denise Bibro Platform, New York City and Ruth Morpeth Gallery, Hopewell, NJ.

In his own words:

"Sometimes the studio can be a fairly raucous place. Sure, there is plenty of time spent sitting, staring at stuff in progress, waiting for the motivation, energy or clarity required to make the next move.

                                         Steven Alexander The Primrose Path, , 2007, 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas

"But when things are in motion, it becomes a place where much happens at once, and where actions are often accompanied by a din of sound - thick, layered and pulsating, moving in and out of focus - symbiotic with the labor, the color and viscosity of the painting process. Recently addressed works in progress lay drying under large fans -- the more stuff to dry, the louder the dense hum of the fans. The louder the fans, the louder the music - overtones of both combining and colliding to form disembodied drones. Often during a cycle of work, one piece of music will be played over and over for the entire duration - the repetition seeming to deepen the focus - the music sustaining a specific poetic relationship with the decisions being made.

                                               Steven Alexander Vibrolux, 2009, 16" x 158", acrylic on 7 canvases

"But then, at a certain point in the process of each painting, it is necessary to completely change the atmosphere. Guston once talked about the the whole laborious painting process leading up to the final fifteen minutes when everything comes together. Well, it may be more than fifteen minutes, but the final stage of each piece is indeed where it all happens - the culmination, the payoff - and it is the most relaxed and satisfying part of the process. That's when the music and the fans are turned off - when a different, more acute focus kicks in. There is only the sound of the trowel sliding across the surface, the taps and clanks of tools and paint buckets on the table as they are chosen, discarded, shuffled around - a subtle awareness of the sound and rhythm of my own breathing and the scuff of my shoeheels on the concrete floor. In this zone, several hours can pass in an instant -- and the expanse, the stillness, the silence that is the essence of painting becomes a physical presence in the room.
                       Steven Alexander Meteor Beach, 2008, 96 x 96 inches, acrylic on 4 canvases (Hines Collection, NYC )

"My work is an exploration of relations that reside in the constant flux of pure sensory events. I am interested in the interaction between the painting and the viewer's imagination and experience; in the painting's catalytic potency - it's potential to generate unspecified mobile meaning.   Color operates in this work and in the world as a kind of pure energy, dynamic, capricious, evocative. The surfaces emphasize the sensual rather than analytical nature of the painting process, and attest to the pervasive presence of time. Within the structures of the work, archetypal relations of male/female, earth/sky, internal/external are inevitably implied; not as opposing forces, but as interdependent aspects of an animate whole. In this sense, the paintings might be regarded as open-ended cosmologies, or as chunks of raw reality, unencumbered.

                                                      Steven Alexander Shine Eye, 2009, 48" x 36", acrylic on canvas

I am trying to build, out of color and substance, a place for the viewer's consciousness - where unexpected associations and resonances may occur, where past and future merge with the present moment, and the stuff of life, love and desire has corporeal presence - states of being, embodied in paint. " Steven Alexander 2009

Willy Bo Richardson

Willy Bo Richardson is an abstract painter living and working in Santa Fe, NM.  His work can be seen at William Seigal Gallery in Santa Fe, Gallery Sakiko and Nohra Haime Gallery, NY, New York, and Fresh Paint Art Advisors, Los Angeles, CA.  Several months ago, we were fortuitously connected by a gallery in Santa Fe because of notable similarities in our work.  What a nice find.  I have been moved by his translucent surfaces of veiled color, and sensitive use of scale.  And by his own articulate meanderings about his work:

                                                            Willy Bo Richardson Poseidon I, 114 x 53 inches, 2008

"Poseidon was painted under a tin roof on a hilltop with rain, lightning and thunder crashing down. I don't know if you've ever been under a tin roof with rain- but it's right there with it.                              

"Natural surrounding is important. I have a love/like relationship with NM. I like the desert, and sometimes really crave it, but generally head for the mountains. Skiing is incredible in Taos. You can also hike up from the last chair to mountain peaks -- a snowy mountain with Tibetan prayer flags is actually up in Taos.  In the summer a good hike will be enough to look out to the distance, and that's where the desert, along side mountains is really lovely.

                                       Willy Bo Richardson Three Stages, #1, Oil on Canvas, 29 x 31 inches, 2004

"And that's where my paintings come in- spaciousness. I try to digest it and put it out for others. Paintings can be like doorways or at least windows to physical locations and more.

                                                                Willy Bo Richardson Bathers, Oil on Canvas, 2008

"Of course, the paintings are not landscapes - strictly places.

                                            Willy Bo Richardson Confluence, Oil on Canvas, 53 x 114 inches, 2001

"The idea of painting is an adaptation. It’s something that our culture can relate to. It has a certain format. Within a frame, within a context. It’s a way of taking an abstract moment, a color, an experience and putting it into a culturally digestible format. 40,000 years ago, humans were painting on the walls of caves. The painting as we know it today is a recent invention, but it's purpose stems back to humans' earliest civilizations.

                                            Willy Bo Richardson Schalako Wall, Oil on Canvas , 53 x 114 inches, 2006

"When I was a child I remember being mesmerized by the blur of colors from the vantage point of a speeding car. Along with the blur and the speed was always a feeling of freedom. In this same way, whenever taking a flight, not only would I leave the earth physically, but on an emotional level gain distance on life.  My paintings give me the same experience. My painting brings perspective. In some ways it’s like creating a window. One can put this window anywhere. No need to move somewhere to get this view. But the window is not necessarily looking out on a beach scene, or a forest scene, or a mountain scene. It’s actually looking out on a “distance scene”, a scene where one has space from their personal life. "                                                                                     Willy Bo Richardson, 2009

A single color is hardly ever unconnected or unrelated to other colors. Color exists as a matter of context, relating constantly to its changing environment. Light. Form.

Thank you, Steven,Thank you, Willy Bo

Speak Line, Shape :: Brent Hallard

060908# 'miyu', 8.27" x 11.69" card on Japanese cotton museum board mounted onto expanded PVC

For me, line is being. When I look at a beautiful drawing, my heart beats faster; I am seduced with the reckoning of space by artist and mark. I respond to line, to shape, to color; to order and to structure; the architectronics of space, both obvious and obscure. I believe drawings can be created as an intuitive response to material placed within a certain defined location, at a certain velocity, within a certain moment. In such processes, the resulting drawings are evidenced as the mechanics of time and structure evolve.


Pour faire simple - at ParisCONCRET. The exhibition marks the opening of a new establishment in Paris devoted to abstract and reductive art.

If you are familiar with my work, you know that I also believe drawing to be a form of visual intelligence; a record of thinking and re-thinking through repetitive attention to formal elements. Brent Hallard creates drawings within this dialogue. As he says, "The spin is in the story that the line and shape speak".

Brent grew up in Sydney Australia. He has lived in Germany and the UK, and currently in Tokyo, Japan. He runs a project space near the Jiyugaoka district called Bus-Dori. Brent keeps a studio blog, ConcretePhone, as well as Visual Discrepancies, where he interviews contemporary artists such as Kevin Finklea, Mel Prest, John Tallman, Doug Witmer, Linn Meyers, and
Shinsuke Aso.

Hallard Studio shot of small mock templates that are being turned in physical signs using corrugated plastic, sheet plastic (that resembles shoji), with Japanese acrylic resin for the color line

Brent's work is evidenced in vividly graphic, scaled segments of line and color positioned within varying spacial parameters. His drawings are a sort of metaphysical exploration of concrete space, implicit with tension arrived at via combined oppositional structures such as controlled line and vast expanse; noise and quietude; the grounded and the gravity-defying; the formalistic and the conceptual.

acrylic and pencil on cut and folded paper, 8.5 x 11.7 in., 2008

"...What I’m actually looking for are a set of lines that work well while keeping the interest in a visual flux. The template drawings are usually small. I use painted tape to clarify choices, but also to hunt out other viable ways of bringing the experience out. I work with very simple materials and employ simple rules that eventually get broken. In the end it’s in the monkey business that you get good rhyme, reason, and rhythm".


spare snippet

Visually spare, yet ephemeral, Brent's work embraces a reductive, perhaps Minimalist aesthetic. But with life. Line is an entrance to surface, and beyond, by sheer constructivist physicality. It moves fluidly, shifts into dimensional form, flattens and returns to quiet. Color, both as chroma and substance, clinches the deal: Japanese acrylic resin on plastic paper, colored tape, mounted board, walls, and layers of corrugated plastic. Simplicity, and beauty.

Spa-t_kiss -pink fb

".... Each of us have our special moment with art, and I have mine too. It's a moment defining a frame within a space, a moment that moves clock-wise, or, and then, anti-clockwise. It's a moment above and below the moment. It's a moment that floods and sinks. It's a moment that pours into every empty cabin-space. It's a moment that moves deeper into the moment. This moment eventually breaks into two, and is engulfed by the one, and as an ocean, drives us through".

TRANSformal at Pharmaka, LA, 2009


Yes, your line and shape do speak.




Thanks, Brent.

Color :: Obscura

Liz Doles Pinhole Camera image 4x5 inches Teotihuacan, Mexico

I recently heard from artist and friend, Liz Doles, who finds herself teaching in Nepal for the winter. Liz is a painter who also takes extraordinary photographs with a pinhole camera.

Liz Doles Digital Image Nepal, 2009

We met as fellow residents at the Vermont Studio Center last fall. I asked , "Why Nepal?", and she sent the following words and images*:

"While others may come to Asia to benefit from Ayurvedic healings, to give rein to unrestricted illegal drug use, to immerse themselves in esoteric Buddhist learning and Hindu spirituality, to shop, to ascend Earth’s highest peaks or drown in guilty sexual pleasures, I came for the color combinations.

Liz Doles Pinhole Camera image 4x5 inches Teotihuacan, Mexico

Crushing color in landscapes of fabulous filth. The extraordinarily brilliant dress of the most ordinary Indian and Nepali women.

　

Liz Doles Digital Image Nepal, 2009

When I walked into the classroom in the monastery and saw its robin’s egg blue walls and crimson doors awash in winter sunlight, the young monks, their lithe, adolescent male bodies draped in maroon, their brown Newari faces with chiseled cheeks and chins, their dewy eyes and plump little pillow lips, Hollywood white dentition and cropped black tonsures, seated erect at benches that extended in parallel rows to the back of the classroom, I fell in love."

Liz Doles Digital Image Nepal, 2009

A pinhole camera is very simple: it is a light-proof box with a small hole in one side, no lens and a single, tiny aperture. Light passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The camera's shutter is manually operated and consists of a flap of light-proof material to cover and uncover the pinhole. Typical exposures range from 5 seconds to hours and sometimes days.

Though slow shutter speed may make for a typically lesser defined image, there is nothing at all obscure about Liz' color. The opposing tension of richness of hue and subtlety of line is very intriguing.

Thanks, Liz.

* The pinhole camera images I have included are not from Nepal as Liz has not been able to travel to Beijing to have her film developed. She sent these more traditional Nepalese digitals of her experience, which when pared with the pinhole images from Mexico, illustrate well the impact the culture, and color, is making on her.