DAVID MIC HAEL SLONIM
1
2
January 28 – February 9, 2019 Scottsdale Artist Reception | February 7 | 6:30–9:00pm
DAVID MIC HAEL SLONIM Holding Up the Sun
Jackson Hole | Scottsdale | AltamiraArt.com
3
Holding Up the Sun Oil on linen | 30 x 24 inches Enquire
4
5
Holding Up the Sun David Michael Slonim folds influences from his past into his abstract paintings. Reflecting on his latest series at Altamira, he traces three imprints from childhood: the stained-glass windows he studied during Catholic mass; the box kites he flew with his dad; and the PlayPlax interlocking squares he constructed into towers. Each is an experiment
6
in light playing over planes of color. These early lessons in line, palette and texture re-emerge now through patient experimentation, as pervasive joy. “The act of painting is inherently optimistic—a refusal to believe life is chaotic and meaningless,” Slonim says. “If harmony and order can exist on a canvas, then harmony and order are real, which means a good painting points toward hope.” His paintings do more than point toward hope, they uphold it. As the exhibit title suggests, Slonim is meditating on structure in his latest work, the ways in which attending to line and light can make communion between painter and viewer possible. In Slonim’s childhood home, these feelings were evoked when standing in front
of the prints by Picasso and van Gogh or beneath the Calder replica that his mother placed around their home. Never directing her son toward abstraction, she let him live amidst modern masterpieces, slowly and cumulatively coming to his own aesthetic. He listened to those works, as he does now to his own, letting the paintings guide their orientation to nature’s rhythms. In the presence of resolved paintings, Slonim finds a solace not unlike the spiritual experience of basking in rays refracted through stained-glass. “Paintings are one of the ways in which we reach for meaning and find our way in the universe,” he says. “I’m trying to express something beyond the senses. It’s a little miracle every time.”
7
First Glimpse of the Sea Oil on linen | 30 x 24 inches Enquire
8
9
Mr. Saturday Night Oil on canvas | 60 x 48 inches Enquire
10
11
Unspoken Prayer Oil on canvas | 72 x 60 inches Enquire
12
13
Reclining Figure Oil on board | 14.5 x 23.5 inches Man Singing Oil on board | 23.5 x 17.75 inches Enquire
14
15
Firefly Oil on linen | 48 x 36 inches Enquire
16
17
Windhover Oil on canvas | 60 x 36 inches Enquire
18
19
After the Rain Oil on linen | 48 x 36 inches Enquire
20
Kingfisher Oil on canvas | 60 x 48 inches Enquire
21
Seated Nude Oil on linen | 48 x 36 inches Enquire
22
23
Woman Bathing Oil on linen | 60 x 48 inches Enquire
24
25
7038 E Main Street | Scottsdale, Arizona 85251 AltamiraArt.com | 480-949-1256
26