G A R Y
K O M A R I N
G ARY KOM A RIN
G A RY
KO M AR IN
Born in New York City, the son of a Czech architect and Viennese writer, Gary Komarin is a risk taker in contemporary painterly abstraction. Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic quality that grip the viewer with the idea that he or she is looking at a contemporary description of something timeless. For painter Gary Komarin, abstraction has never been a formal dead end. Rather, it has allowed him to challenge the limitations of the style–to make painting ‘include more’ precisely because a recognizable image excludes too much. Komarin has been called a “painter’s painter.” His status in this regard is based on the authenticity of his work, its deep connection to the tradition of modern painting as well as its sustained individuality as an utterly personal voice. Like many of the best artists of his generation, he is indebted to the New York School, especially his mentor Philip Guston with whom he studied at Boston University where he was awarded a Graduate Teaching Fellowship. Komarin has
been particularly successful at filtering these influences throughout his own potent iconography. Guston’s influence is evident in Komarin’s merger of drawing and painting, often breaking the picture plane of his rich and elegantly composed color fields with an assortment of private iconic cake and vessel-like objects. Preferring nonart industrial canvas tarps and drop cloths, Komarin eschews traditional painting media and materials. He builds layered surfaces with latex house paint in a thinned out sluice mixed with spackle and water. The house paint offers hybrid colors that seem slightly ‘off’ and the spackle creates a beautifully matte surface. Using color energetically, the quick-drying materials allow him to paint with a sense of urgency, which mirrors the tension created by conflicting renderings of the spontaneous and the deliberate. The conscious and the unconscious or the strange and familiar. The resulting image is one that appears familiar but resists recognition. Komarin lives in the rural hills of Litchfield County, Connecticut.
A WILDER BLUE, KIT MANDOR Enamel on Canvas | 69x60
THE VICOMTE + SOME OF HIS PARTS Enamel on Canvas | 80x68
STILL LIFE WITH FRENCH WIG Enamel on Canvas | 84x66
TWO PAIR IN PINK + CREME Enamel on Canvas | 60x48
SHORT CAKE HUNTER GREEN ON CREME Enamel on Paper Sack | 50x48
MINT ON CREME
ROYAL BLUE ON CREME
RASPBERRY ON CREME
WHITE ON BLUE BLACK
OLIVE GREEN ON CREME
CORNFLOWER BLUE ON CREME
CAKE STACKS Enamel on Paper Sack | 50x24
ORANGE ON BLUE
BLACK ON CHARCOAL
CHARCOAL ON
ORANGE ON BLACK
N HUNTER GREEN
SINGLE SACK CAKES CREME ON HUNTER GREEN
Enamel on Paper | 16x12
THE FRENCH WIG COLLECTION SERIES OF 9 Enamel on Canvas | 14x11
THE DUKE AND WIGMORE I + II Enamel on Paper | 22x30
VESSEL, PINK ON GREEN Enamel on Paper | 30x22
“ My paintings proceed without preconcepti
going to paint. I think of myself as a stageh
for drama to unfold. The very best painting
Once a painting has achieved a life of its ow
this is a good place to be. For me, the best
ion. I paint to find out what it is that I am
hand who sets up the conditions necessary
gs are most often those that fail the most.
wn, when it speaks back to you as a painter,
t paintings are those that paint themselves. – Gary Komarin, 2015
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