PREVIEWS OF WORKS FOR SALE AT UPCOMING SHOWS COAST TO COAST
98
december 2013
AMERICAN
COLLECTOR
Finding his
Way Jeremy Lipking has discovered his subject matter and is exploring it deeper than ever before. By Joshua Rose
M
uch has changed for Jeremy Lipking since his last solo exhibition at New York City’s Arcadia Contemporary gallery nearly four years ago. Even though Lipking has received wide acclaim since he first burst onto the art scene when he was in his early 20s, in these last four years he has grown from a technically brilliant artist working mainly in the classical figurative tradition to an artist who is more comfortable with his talent and maturity and who is more interested in delving into conceptual and philosophical notions tied to the painting process. With the addition of his fourth child, a daughter, Sierra, who was born this past August, Lipking—now 37—is growing into both roles; one as father and the other as a full-
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Untitled, oil on canvas, 20 x 30"
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Innocence, oil on canvas, 22 x 16"
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Jacob at Sundown, oil on canvas, 40 x 24"
time working artist. He wakes up early every morning, drives his children to school and then heads to the studio where he spends the day painting. For this current exhibition, Lipking at first wanted to combine both of these loves and fill the entire show with paintings of his eldest daughter Skylar. While he has stuck to this for the most part, he has now decided to include paintings of other friends, acquaintances, models and—for only the second or third time in his career—himself. “I’ve always wanted to do an entire show with different paintings using the same model and I’ve painted her a lot so it seemed like a natural fit,” says Lipking. “But, the difficult part about painting your own daughter is that with
Adrift, oil on canvas, 40 x 40"
other models you don’t really strive to make it look exactly like the person, but with Skylar, while they are not portraits of her, I want it to look like her. She’s my daughter.” His last exhibition at Arcadia included the painting Skylar in Blue, which some people feel was his best work to date. For this exhibition Lipking has included an update of that painting titled Innocence that, unlike the first version, pans out to show most of Skylar, with her angelic face contrasted against the darkness of her vintage cloak and hat. Like the first, though, she is shown against an absolutely beautiful bluish-gray background that Lipking is known for so well. At this stage in his career, Lipking seems to
be enjoying all aspects of being an artist. He frequently travels throughout the Southwest with artist friends such as Logan Maxwell Hagege, Glenn Dean, and Tony Pro on painting trips; teaches regularly in his studio; and enjoys talking about not just his work but art in general. “I think he has found his subject and is exploring it more deeply now,” says Hagege, who just returned from a seven-day painting trip with Lipking to southern Utah. “He really enjoys talking about the work, interacting with other artists. He’s really come into his own.” And now Lipking sees the greatest principle guiding this new work as one of simplicity. “I’m always trying to simplify,” says
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Sonya, oil on canvas, 12 x 16"
Lipking. “Less is better, and almost everything comes down to composition and design. Big simple shapes that read well from a distance are what I’m after. Also, I try and not load too many things into one single painting.” For Lipking, at this stage in his career, it is the subtle details that differentiate a good painting from a great painting. “That is the one thing that has changed for me,” says Lipking. “I’m seeing more of the subtleties, whether it is color, shape, edges or even the content in a painting. Sometimes, it is things like the expression on someone’s face that brings a narrative to the painting. Even if it is vague or ambiguous, a little says so much.
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So, that is what I’m trying to do more of.” And, other times it can be in how Lipking chooses to place the paint on the canvas. “It’s other things too,” says Lipking. “Softening an edge or sharpening an edge, for example, can completely change the entire mood of a piece.” In the end, though, it’s always about the visual, unspoken elements of a work that inspires a painter. And when I talk to great painters about Lipking’s work, they all tell me the same thing: the genius in his work comes from an intrinsic sense of taste that allows him to know what to leave in a painting and what to edit out.
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“If something doesn’t look right, it just stands out. It’s just glaring,” says Lipking. “You don’t need to do that much. Sometimes it just comes down to making one shape a little darker in a painting than another. You don’t need to go that extreme, just make the eye look in a particular spot in a painting. Our mind is so good at finding patterns that one needs to just be able to take advantage of that in a painting.” Lipking has spent a lot of time thinking about such things especially with how they relate to a work of art. A recent article he read talked about a company that has a computer that records and tracks eye movements and
Self-Portrait as Zorn, oil on canvas, 7 x 10"
is used by advertising and media companies. “When it comes to the face, people usually look at one of the eyes first and then move back and forth across the eyes, then down to the mouth,” says Lipking. “It’s really fascinating and if you track the movement it resembles a triangle.” Another new element in this exhibition is a self-portrait. According to Lipking, he has painted maybe two other self-portraits in his life. And for this new painting Lipking has placed himself in a painting of one of his favorite artists, Anders Zorn. “It’s titled Self-Portrait as Zorn,” says Lipking. “What was nice is not having to
worry about the model, whether they would show up on time or show up at all. I was able to take my time on this and didn’t have to schedule it. Last summer I was in Denmark and Sweden for about a month. I wanted to take some pictures of a couple of models at the end of one of the days on an island in the archipelago. We were rowing out and one of the models took the photo of me rowing. I did a five-day workshop in Zorn’s hometown and this was one of the paintings to come out of that.” A portrait of a father, paintings of his children and wife surrounding him—this exhibition at Arcadia Contemporary in New
York just may reveal more of Lipking as a person than any show he has put together thus far. And, as art lovers, we are all the better for it.
Jeremy Lipking Recent Paintings When: December 12-31, 2013 Where: Arcadia Contemporary, 51 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013 Info: www.arcadiacontemporary.com, (212) 965-1387
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JEREMY LIPKING
”Adrift”
Oil on Canvas
40” x 40”
Recent Paintings December 12 - 31, 2013
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FOUR SEASONS HOTEL
51 Greene Street
57 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10013
New York, NY 10022
Phone (212) 965-1387
Phone (212) 759-5757 Website: www.arcadiacontemporary.com © 2013 Arcadia Contemporary and Jeremy Lipking
JEREMY LIPKING
”Interlude”
Oil on Canvas
22” x 30”
Recent Paintings December 12 - 31, 2013
SOHO
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL
51 Greene Street
57 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10013
New York, NY 10022
Phone (212) 965-1387
Phone (212) 759-5757 Website: www.arcadiacontemporary.com © 2013 Arcadia Contemporary and Jeremy Lipking