When Red, Yellow, and Blue Sing
Red Yellow Blue, 2009, oil on canvas, triptych 60 x 144 in.
As the Twentieth Century dawned, painters could rest upon previous decades of color theory, research, and empirical exploration. In an evolving conversation about symbol, affect, and spiritualism, abstraction opened a visual language of a developing and expanding vocabulary.
From cubism through abstract expressionism through color field painting, the interests of painters took many paths to building a surface from the large gesture to the intimate mark.
After more than a century of non-objective painting, after a now deeply conversant language of abstracted systems, the painter stands in the studio with an array of possibilities. This Twenty-First Century position is one of great height and broad perspective. The artist faces a vast array of historical, political, and spiritual visions upon which to elaborate, a myriad of choices in a time that allows for any and all.
So it all the more worthy of reflection that figuration has persisted, re-emerged, repeatedly reared up to assert an impulse to represent: the experienced, dreamed, the feared, the longed for.
The pursued paths of painting often converge, but then verge off in directions revealing unique sensibilities. An involvement with color, indeed, the dominance of a color, has been pushed through the framework of expressionism, pop art, and the ever re-emerging expressionistic responses of successive generations.
With differing weights of color, the paintings are formed not only by the contrasting elements of hue, but on the pulsating shape activated by color. These elements define a space for the contrasting, the “other,” to live. And these very same elements provide the ground against which to push, to counter, to detach and be set free. The tension established by the assertion of picture plane and the separation of contrasting figure keeps the viewer in a comparable state of imbalance: moving in to the beckoning softness of the ground, and stepping back from the vibrating figure ready to fly off the canvas.
Here is a view of divergent possibilities: to encapsulate the figure in isolation or elation, to expound an iconic symbolism of subject, to lift and float freely toward the viewer – or for the color to lift off the surface and capture the viewer in that shared space – or, for the whisper of color to pull the viewer into the vortex of the painting. In the artist’s hand, the nature of color is compelling.