STEVEN SEINBERG PAINTINGS AND WORKS ON PAPER | 2010 - 2022
PAINTINGS AND WORKS ON PAPER 2010STEVEN2022 SEINBERG ESSAYS BY PETER FRANK ROBERT C. MORGAN AND KARINA NOEL HEAN BILL LOWE GALLERY | ATLANTA . GEORGIA
Bill Lowe for always being there for me and for my work, for inspiring and encouraging me to paint even in times I felt I couldn’t. - S.S.
To
STEVEN PAINTINGSSEINBERGANDWORKS ON PAPER 2010 - 2022 Essay: Steven Seinberg - Second Nature , 2022 by Peter Frank, Los Angeles Essay: Steven Seinberg - A Brief Repose , 2011 by Karina Noel Hean, Santa Fe Essay: The Resonance of Poetry in Painting , 2019 by Robert C. Morgan, New York Essay: Steven Seinberg - Recent Work , 2021 by Peter Frank, Los Angeles Cover: (Detail) Lagoon , 2021 Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas 76x120 Opposite:inches Studio , Published2020in 2022 by BILL LOWE GALLERY, Atlanta, USA. All rights reserved. ©2022 BILL LOWE GALLERY ©2022 Steven Seinberg Studio
12 Steven Seinberg - Second Nature Peter Frank, 2022 18 Steven Seinberg - A Brief Repose Karina Noel Hean, 2011 22 The Resonance of Poetry in Painting Robert C. Morgan, 2019 28 Steven Seinberg - Recent Work Peter Frank, 2021 32 Paintings and works on paper 2010 - 2017 126 Paintings and works on paper 2018 - 2022 242 Biography / CV
TRUTH OF WATER, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80
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STEVEN SEINBERG - SECOND NATURE Peter DuringFrankaninterview at a turning point in his career, Jackson Pollock was asked if he “painted from nature,” that is, from observation of the world around him. Pollock did not reject the question, but nor did he affirm it. “I am nature,” he responded, asserting not simply the omnipresence of nature itself, but the artist’s coincident dependence and autonomy – intellectual, emotional, stylistic, technical –within the natural order. Such autonomy, and such dependence, are grounded in great part on powers of observation; but they are grounded first and foremost in the artist’s pan-sensate response to the world, not just the seen but the heard, the felt, the tasted and smelled. Art, averred Pollock, is where, and how, humankind reflects on its existential station, and artists are thus tasked, almost shamanistically, with giving voice and vision to that reflection. In his painting, drawing, and collage Steven Seinberg reifies this task and accepts it, as Pollock and so many others have. But, like all the other artists who realize such a task, Seinberg does so by manifesting an inimitable sensibility, an “aesthetic personality” that not only distinguishes his work from others’ but tells us more about us and our place in nature than we’ve already been told. A typical landscape painter might please us with a recapitulation of space and atmosphere, and a superior landscapist can deepen our appreciation of and sense of connection with a vast array of tropospheric phenomena. But a landscape painter, abstract or otherwise, who makes a difference in our vision does so by representing space and atmosphere – and form and rhythm, and presence and absence – in an unanticipated, unpredictable, ineffable way. For all his tendency to work in series, in each of his works Seinberg not only clarifies his vantage, but broadens ours. His art brings him and us both closer to knowing nature by being nature. Continuities and nuances found in his art over the past decade result at least as much from the patterns of nature itself as from the patterns of Seinberg’s mind and Dohand.we then “become one with nature” as we regard a moody, misty Seinberg canvas? Do the plant forms captured and invoked in his stark drawings and taciturn collages mark the midpoint between (each of) us and the natural order? In a manner of speaking, yes, his works map out our grasp of nature and nature’s grasp of us. But they don’t fabricate this grasp; they elucidate connections already there, connections Seinberg’s audience acknowledges (or is capable of acknowledging) in some form. Seinberg’s art alerts us to natural effects; but even more it alerts us to, or reminds us of, the fact that these effects are already working upon us in nature, in life, itself. inches, Collection
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16 PATH (5), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches LIGHT, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches PATH (6), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches
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“[Monet] was only an eye,” Picasso mused, “but what an eye!”
Seinberg, then, regards nature as a kind of source-subject, an allenveloping physical and metaphysical life-field whose coherence, even unity, is not so much seen in his vaporous pictures as bespoken, testified to, witnessed. If the collages seem more concrete in their referent shapes and surfaces than do the canvases, they are in fact no more specific, even when the telltale form of leaves might suggest a botanist’s scrapbook. A biologically recognizable leaf does not signal the taxonomy of flora so much as it provokes associations and memories. In this regard Seinberg’s collages are like pages from an intimate book of poems, not least in their graphic terseness, compactness, and ellipticality. Even more than the paintings, the collages build on negative space – a negative space riven with drips, spots, and other incidents, as “empty” as outer and inner space itself.
Seinberg speaks to us in an unorthodox but not unfamiliar language, a kind of disembodied impressionism where the identity of things is of less significance than is their texture, their contour, their bulk.
From one point of view, at least, this is a knowingly approximate apprehension of the world, certainly in visual terms. It bespeaks a blunted sight on our part, a constrained optical cognizance whose very inexactitude is what makes it revelatory. Haze and precipitation heighten somatic awareness even as they compromise visual apprehension. In this regard Seinberg continues a tradition of western spatial painting that goes back at least as far as J.M.W. Turner and Barbizon and Barbizonesque practice (e.g. tonalism), reaches another apogee in Impressionism, and suffuses throughout modern painting, coming most stunningly to the fore in the affective abstraction of artists such as Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, and, in a different way, Cy Twombly.
Yet, there is something in Monet’s quavering efflorescences which moves us beyond a solely retinal feast; with his remark Picasso was not reducing Monet to the seen but elevating the seen to the transcendent. It is this pathway to transcendence through vision to which Seinberg has dedicated his artistic project, recognizing Rothko and Monet and Turner as his philosophical as well as practical and sensual progenitors.
His self-aware reflection of nature happens to tie Seinberg to the (especially later) work of Claude Monet, as in the Water Lilies.
The void teems with elements and particles of all kinds and sizes, whether neutrinos or supernovae, and the open, echoing blank fields that seemingly comprise the major part of any Seinberg work are as vital as the “filled-in” areas. Indeed, quite often these darker, more massed locations – including the occasional procession of rough-hewn dots marking a superficial grid – seem more realms of absence than do the lighter expanses around them. This is a figure-ground relationship whose figures are as likely to recede as advance. Veils of running paint further complectify the push and pull, re-anchoring wanton silhouettes, dissolving clots and clusters like paper in rain. For all the evocation, and distillation, of earthly forms and sensations, Seinberg’s paintings leave us unsure what visual scale he would have us employ. Are these life-size, distorted by receding perspective like their Turnerian forebears? Are they microcosms in among Monet’s water-borne plants? Are they galaxies splayed out across light years, as Frankenthaler and Rothko infer? They are all of the above, of course, but it’s too easy simply to declare that. The work gains much of its energy from the steep changes in amplitude possible in any single work (including collage). Seinberg’s airy, measured, circumspect compositional manner allows us to discover many degrees of existence in any given image. A cloud can be a protozoan; an atom can be a nebula. And this results not just from pictorial observation, but from the breadth of sensate response Seinberg’s works inspire.
One thing we learn from – or are reminded by – Seinberg’s art is that there is no emptiness. Not only does nature abhor a vacuum, it expends no little effort to fill it.
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Pictorial observation, of course, is the trigger for such sensate response. Steven Seinberg is first and foremost a visual artist, and as noted, an inheritor of a painterly tradition in Western art. This tradition trusts in and strives for as thorough and universal an experience with painting as skill and vision allow. Seinberg’s vision roots him in and at the same time above the material world – which is where we find nature and our place(s) in it. We are nature: Seinberg’s art insists, and demonstrates, no less.
Peter Frank Los MarchAngeles2022
SUSPEND, 2022, Oil, acrylic and graphite on linen, 38x60 inches
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STEVEN SEINBERG - A BRIEF REPOSE
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Karina Noel Hean Inertia is an impossibility . . . in a life, in a river, in a painting. Steven Seinberg’s paintings imply that motion is an incessant and loss inevitable. While the desire for rest propels and holds us, it is only a temporary possibility from which we proceed and to which we progress. Embracing vagueness, Seinberg paints translucent space in layers of colorful grays occupied by indefinable elements in brief states of buoyancy, suspension, and sometimes tumult. As a cycle of paintings, the work produced from 2004-2011 reflects a key feature of a river’s ecosystem – the persistence of similar Seinberg’schange.somber paintings evolve from and update the work of mid-twentieth century American Abstract Expressionist painters, such as Cy Twombly, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still, from the perspective of a twenty-first century American. The action that occurs in the openness of his large canvases is witness to a heightened sensitivity, nostalgia, and humility grounded in a spirituality of natural phenomena. While the exploration of format and media clearly engage Seinberg, as they did his predecessors, they do so largely to serve his investigation of how life of a river flows and unfolds. In much of the work, and particularly present in “Waiting” 2008, a personal entomology occurs as one repeated character, a black biological tangle, is restated and reformed in new circumstances. In “Morning” 2009 the possibility of stillness is presented in a definitive horizon line and vacuous depths dense, white layers. The script above the horizon and dark marks below remind us that peace, though desired, is however fleeting – the day must begin, water flows . . . change is pending. “Flows Through” 2010 pushes and buoys a living bundle past the state of inertia as water moves dirt; sometimes here and this way, sometimes there, and that way. Temporary resolution occurs in “Center of Rest” 2009 as a dangling lifeform remains suspended, just beneath the firm horizon line that separates a warm world above and a cool, dark world below. A soft release of earthy yellow forms resumes in “Emerge” 2010 and declares the constancy of change in organic systems. Seinberg maps a nonlinear, kinetic narrative of a cycle that charts the stages of motion from inertia, release, and progress, back to rest, and again to emergence as the paintings consider how life is affected beneath the water’s surface, underground, and out of view.
21 WAITING, 2008, Oil and graphite on canvas, 58x46 inches (Private Collection MORNING, 2009, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches, Private Collection
22 FLOWS FORWARD, 2008, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches, Private Collection
23 As they are intuitively developed, the paintings reveal the history of their process. The canvases seem witness to lengthy pondering and reflection, interrupted by momentarily decisive attacks; they capture a kind of time and volume. Indeed, the action of hoe marks and brushstrokes are made is the core of Seinberg’s subject matter. The work displays an affinity for chance and embraces the materiality of his preferred media: graphite and thin washed of paint. Drips, smears, and translucency create a powerfully sparse space and offer quiet visual anchors in the nebulous fields of Seinberg’s Balancesurfaces. between careful, subtle calligraphic lines and emphatic, swirling gestures evoke a latent emotional tension in much of the work and is starkly evident in “Night Opens” 2008. Indecipherable text emerges from layers of wash and paint like fleeting thoughts made momentarily important. In “Flows Forward” 2008 discernable forms or phrases are hushed by the painting’s complex gray and earth tone palette. Seinberg clearly values mark making and handwriting a moment of personal attentiveness, which as in the painting “Lift” 2008, are vulnerably situated amongst vast and mysterious Hisspaces.economical and yet passionate compositions reflect the language and meter of Octavio Paz’s poems, whose lines often appear as Seinberg’s canvases and serve as several of his titles. This echoing relationship is at times reciprocal. An excerpt from Paz’s poem “Summit and Gravity” keenly captures the visual experience of these numinous paintings: “…Between firmness and vertigo/you are transparent balance…”
Karina Noel Hean Santa Fe March 2011
In Steven Seinberg’s work, voices and natural forms are muffled; submerged beneath the surface, pushing towards the viewer as sounds against the air through water can be heard. The elusive organic imagery of Seinberg’s paintings emerge from his attempt to find place in the world, to see the macroscopic in the microscopic- life in the river and the inevitable interconnection between coexistent systems in a large ecology.
THE RESONANCE OF POETRY IN PAINTING ROBERT C. ExpressionistMORGANformsof painting have found new ways of evolving in recent years, especially in American art. It seems that artists are pervasively seeking to give painting another form of openness, which exists without self-imposed constraints. Having said this, I find in the works of Steven Seinberg a “delicate balance” whereby his lucid, yet tenuous forms become what they are through the artist’s keen self-reflective ability to visualize his painterly process each step of the way. His paintings do not require a theory. Instead they offer sensitive viewers an invitation to engage in the act of seeing on the level of visual tactility; the actual encounter with his gestural forms unlocks new meaning, which resonates beyond our expectations. Seinberg’s paintings ride on the edge of something unforeseen, a painterly ethos that gives the texture of his surfaces a sense of accuracy, another openness on the reality of what makes a painting become a painting. To accomplish this with alacrity and confidence is in itself meaningful. Seinberg’s paintings radiate a transcendence and grandeur on a scale that few painters are capable of achieving today. They re-open the fundamentals, and in doing so, offer a new chapter in the history of connoisseurship. To see a Seinberg painting with clarity, is to know where it exists in time and how it sustains an eloquence of its own. Seinberg’s paintings involve a complex process in addition and subtraction, as he ardently focuses on the preliminary aspects of releasing form from rigid confines. What may appear as an instantaneous splash of ochre pigment is more complex and in some ways innately inconspicuous. The challenge, of course, is to obtain poetic insight through various methods of manipulating the materiality of pigment, thus giving the surface a clear and convincing visual affect removed from the obvious. I refer to a painting titled, Lagoon (2018), in which Seinberg combines oil paint with graphite and various mixed media as he does consistently in his work. Of course, the affect is intended to look as if it happened in a glance; but then there is the challenge to go deeper, to penetrate into the actual structure of how the oppositional dark and light elements are applied and/or removed, and how they appear to combine with one another at the same moment on a single surface. The result is, in fact, a poetic one.
Indeed, Seinberg’s paintings may function as a form of “visual poetry”— to cite the expression given to the artist’s work by Seinberg’s gallerist. While we may argue over the meaning of the term, language-in-itself will not help us clarify the artist’s experience. Rather we are obliged to decode the artist’s vision from another perspective, such as seeking out Seinberg’s lyrical fascination with what he sees and how he transports that vision onto canvas. In this way, others may (or may not) take part in the artist’s emotional involvement. It is finally up to the viewer, as it always is, when one encounters a new painting for the first time. How do we discover the emotional content of an artist’s work unknown to us in the past? And how do we envision the visual antecedents in a painting, which, after all, are limited in how they historically possess the surface?
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25 LAGOON (10), 2018, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x64 inches, Private Collection
These are important questions, particularly as art comes to the screen where our tactile response to painting is in competition with other more seductive images representing politics and advertisements in a way that art does not. As an alternative, I prefer the notion of visual poetry in the manner that it transforms our vision of painting. As the San Francisco poet Michael McClure once exclaimed some years ago, we need poetry that gives us “relief from the revolution,” despite what the revolution was or has become in recent years. The point is this: Steven Seinberg’s paintings impress me as having the potential to enact a way of seeing through color and form – to offer an alternative way of coming to terms with an optical tactility, where the retina reaches out and makes contact with our emotions in a way that instigates a refinement of desire. This is a phenomenon that belongs to painting in that it denotes when a painting becomes significant. The act of seeing a painting in the most complete sense should allow for a sheer haptic experience. Only the Light on the Sea , is the title of this exhibition. What could be more poetic? It is not simply the title, but the content embraced through it. I sense this line as having a special resonance that goes beyond obvious surface maneuvers into the language of paint; a language deeply inscribed by an acute consciousness of motion, a memory that travels the distance between chaos and sensuality.
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The configuration of this gestural motion in Seinberg’s, Nothing That Comes From the Other World (2019), offers the viewer a redemption through the pulse, namely the feeling of the heartbeat taken beyond the grasp of particulars, yet known to be the cause of what brings us into the world, that is, a way of seeing the world as a myriad of poetic infusions without default.
NOTHING THAT COMES FROM THE OTHER WORLD, 2010, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches, Private Collection ONLY THE LIGHT ON THE SEA, 2019, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection
One might presuppose that the form as an eye is not, literal. Rather it may represent a feeling of embarkation toward sleep. The diagonal position appears necessary as does the purposefully rendered lack of a clearly defined space. The poetry in not simply about representation, but the sensory feeling expressed in the weariness that follows extreme wakefulness as the “closed eye” enters into sleep, which is the domain of the unconscious.
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Having just seen the exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Epic Abstraction , the poetry is sometimes present, yet at other times difficult to trace. The paintings are large. Several belong to the Abstract Expressionist painters seven or eight decades ago. The grand scale of these works is manifested everywhere.
Whereas the curation, the concept, and the mounting of the exhibition is problematic, there were several works worthy of attention – some first-rate Rothko paintings, to be sure. I mention this only to suggest that within the logos of expressionism – whatever the context: cultural or historical – the poetic message is not always a priority. Other issues, both internal and external – appear to over-ride it. To explain the poetic content in a painting is a challenge. But here lies the crux of the matter as to why it requires justification as something necessary, if not vital, to visual art today.
It is clear that Seinberg’s paintings, whether in his signature work-on-paper format or his large canvases, both reach out implicitly toward poetry in a more direct way than much Abstract Expressionism. Within the process of “reaching out,” one discovers the tension within his painterly language that gives poetic content to the work. I am thinking of, Below Her Closed Eyes (2019), where a densely concentrated area of blackness is askew to the right in the painting. How does this form reach out? And what does it mean?
Robert C. Morgan New York 2019
Having recently read William Blake’s, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1788 – 94), the play of oppositions between two sensorial states of mind often appears less obvious than one might expect. Initially, Blake goes for what is simple and direct, then transforms this worldly phenomenon into a paradoxical ambiguity that elicits a metaphysical state of mind beyond the everyday world. In a similar way, one might consider that Seinberg is less interested in painting oppositions than in the passages between them. What we see in the everyday world is not what the artist paints. Rather the atmosphere he paints moves us toward another hemisphere where we allow ourselves to embrace meaning through an emotional response to the lost intervals of time that intercede upon our expectations of what is real. As Blake continued to question what is real, Seinberg brings this quest into the present – less as a proposition than as a search for everyday Becausetranscendence.ofSeinberg’s desire to take his sensory responses outside of chaos, the paintings remain steady, which should not be confused with repetition. Rather his lyrical scope as a painter implies the need to evolve a vision through the agency of his materials. Certainly, color is part of this, as is form. But, in addition, there is the artist’s ability to expand a painting, as in, Spreading to Water (2017), into a poetic context that is something more than an expression. Perhaps, we could call it a metaphysical extension of the real, an idea transformed into a harkening sensibility that removes itself from fashionable trends.
The poetry in painting, which I understand as essential to the work of Seinberg, does not require a political message. Nor does it advance a retreat into “art for art’s sake.” Neither are relevant to Seinberg’s work. To retrieve the poetry within the surface of Spreading to Water , is a matter of seeing and of coming to terms with one’s position in physical, mental, and emotional terms. What gives this painting its sense of completeness is the discovery that poetry is held within the surface, possibly unknown to the painter himself, until the moment when it suddenly erupts, ready to transcend the mediated chaos of common ideas.
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STEVEN SEINBERG: RECENT WORK Peter Frank When is a mark not a mark? When it is not merely a mark. What makes a mark more than a mark? A mark maker with broader cause, one who seeks to reach beyond the clatter of marks and make a language of and place for marks. Marks as space. Marks as notes. Marks as meanings. Marks as contexts. Marks as sensations. Marks as sounds. Marks as weather.
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Steven Seinberg’s broader cause expands beyond his marks and at the same time plunges into his marking. For years Seinberg has experimented with medium and manner to determine the best ways of harnessing marks to their provocative potential. He has determined two distinct formulas for doing so. One provides picture, the other notation. One provides atmosphere, the other thought. Neither is a pure manifestation of marking; the marking process, certainly as presented in the austere reflexivity of post-minimalist practice, does not engage Seinberg. Rather, the resonance of his marking emerges from a lyrical, associative sensibility, one reliant on the poetic connection and sensual, even somatic frisson, characteristic of the gestural abstraction that predominated, in the United States and abroad, in the years after World War II. It would not be ambitious to regard Seinberg’s works on paper – collages especially – as a kind of quasi-visual verse, or his paintings as passages in the account of some epic quest.
LIFT, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches CHANGE, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches
The marks variously rain on the eyes and lead them on treasure hunts, forming almost palpable fields of moisture in the paintings, or setting out documentation, at once familiar and arcane, in the work on paper.
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Poetry and gesture thus power Seinberg’s work, binding it not to a previous era in art but to enduring qualities that we associate with pictorial conditions available throughout the history of painting (and not just in the West). Seinberg’s mists and drizzles, for instance, recall J.M.W. Turner’s; but there is a change in the weather between them. The 19th century Englishman wielded fog like a soft monster swallowing the world; the 21st century American employs it as a cleansing force, inhaling hexes and toxins and easing the soul’s stress, a kind of brush-applied mantra to becalm the soul.
Is Seinberg, then, striving to revive a mid-century sensibility? Do his fogs and fragments, his moody vistas and scrapbook composites, point us to any particular time and/or place and/or event? They can; but the evocations are in the eye and mind – and heart – of the beholder. If in fact Seinberg wishes to resuscitate the language of painterly abstraction, it’s the evocative aspect – the poetry of vision – that he wants to bring to the fore. What we behold are the elements of song and memory, dream and detail, ingredients for the imagination and at the same time discrete receptacles for it. The tone is one of ecstasy suffused throughout melancholy in the paintings, vice versa – contemplative retreat signaled by the play of assembly – in the collages.
Los DecemberAngeles2021
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The work Steven Seinberg has produced in the last couple of years has seen a certain refinement and focus of eloquence. We might attribute this to the relative isolation current events have forced upon him, as on the rest of us; but these moments of evolution and artistic growth have occurred in Seinberg’s studio before, so they are hardly unique to a pandemic. The heightened elegance and sensual coherence of the recent work mark a renewed clarity in the artist’s oeuvre, but that clarity is even more valuable and meaningful to us than it is to him: this kind and modest beauty is balm to our plague-wracked eyes. There’s more than a bit of truth to the conception of the artist as a shaman. Certainly, in these accretions of marks, these assemblies of strokes and lines and clusters and washes and elusive but potent images, Seinberg reaches out to us to share in the healing.
Peter Frank
Seinberg’s collages, as noted, serve a more or less complementary function to his paintings. The vocabulary of forms certainly overlaps, but it deploys to different effect in the work on paper than in their canvas counterparts. It is as easy to see the two bodies of work, at least recently, as that produced by two different hands as by one. This, of course, is to Seinberg’s credit; we have come to understand that artists are more than likely to work in more than one fashion at a time, that the breadth of their practice almost requires variety and relaxed (if not downright unbound) possibility. The underlying sensibility of the artist emerges nevertheless – allowing us to appreciate and unpack that sensibility that much further. Seinberg’s collages and his paintings share certain factors – rough silhouettes of plants, informal repeated mark-motifs – but involve them in markedly different visual experiences, ordered and composed very differently, scaled very differently, offering very different notions of texture and touche. Where the paintings offer enveloping respite, the collages present another kind of meditative release, resembling ancient, partly deciphered, partly undecipherable texts whose illuminations add to the mystery by becoming entangled in the calligraphy of the page.
Note well, though; some of Seinberg’s magic-breath canvases offer more tranquility than others, and none ever devolves into optical anodyne. Indeed, key to their healing effect is the paintings’ reliance on a reticent palette expressed in a scumble of, yes, marks, gentle and alluring but not pretty. This is food, not clothing, for the retina.
-Bill Lowe
“The paintings communicate in a mysterious, unobtrusive manner, speaking subtly and instinctively. Because the various elements within his pictures are determined by what he intuits at each moment of the process of creation, every aspect and phase of his work fades in and out of the paint almost imperceptibly. His ability to poetically and atmospherically convey the powerful, even primordial forces that dictate the rhythms of the organic universe translate into images that nurture the mind, heart and soul.”
34 2010Studio, 2010 - 2017
FLOW THROUGH , 2010, Oil and graphite on canvas, 74x136 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) Flow Through , 2010
RIVERBED, 2010, Oil and graphite on canvas, 48x40 inches, Private Collection
URGE, 2010, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches, Private Collection
PULLED BACK, 2010, Oil and graphite on canvas, 44x60 inches, Private Collection PERFECT THEIR SEEDS, 2011, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection
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(Detail) Perfect Their Seeds , 2011
EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT STONE IS LIGHT, 2011, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT STONE IS LIGHT (2), 2011, Oil and graphite on canvas, 40x56 inches, Private Collection
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RIVERBED (2), 2011, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches, Private Collection LIGHT AND STONE, 2012, Oil and graphite on canvas, 56x48 inches, Private Collection
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(Detail) Riverbed (2) , 2011
AWAKE, 2012, Oil and graphite on canvas, 40x40 inches, Private Collection EMERGE (3), 2012, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x40 inches, Private Collection
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FEELS LIKE FALLING, 2012, Oil and graphite on canvas, 26x58 inches WAIT, 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 28x48 inches, Private Collection
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IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES, 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x104 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) If You Close Your Eyes , 2013
FLOAT OVER, 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 44x60 inches, Private Collection WHILE YOU SLEEP (2), 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches, Private Collection
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WAKE, 2013, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection SLEEP, 2013, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection DIVIDE, 2014, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection DIVIDE (2), 2014, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection
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SILENCE, 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 76x60 inches, Private Collection RIPEN, 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 38x58 inches, Private Collection
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(Detail) Silence , 2013
RETURN BACK, 2014 Oil and graphite on canvas, 44x60 inches
(Detail) Return Back , 2014
WHILE YOU SLEEP, 2013, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection WAITING FOR LONGER DAYS, 2014, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection
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WHILE YOU SLEEP (3), 2014, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x60 inches, Private Collection AHEAD, 2014, Oil and graphite on canvas, 74x100 inches, Private Collection
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EMERGE, 2014, Oil and graphite on canvas, 45x50 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) Emerge , 2014
OSPREY, 2015, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x40 inches, Private Collection
OPEN, 2014, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x60 inches, Private Collection
LAGOON (6), 2015, Oil and graphite on canvas, 40x50 inches, Private Collection LAGOON, 2014, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x60 inches, Private Collection
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CREEK (2), 2015, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection LAGOON, 2015, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection MARSH, 2015, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection TIDAL, 2015, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection
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I CAN REMEMBER, 2015, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) Can Remember , 2015
LAGOON, 2016, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Collection of the artist LAGOON, 2016, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection
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FLOCK, 2016, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection PATH, 2016, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches
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NEW, 2016, Oil and graphite on canvas, 40x60 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) New , 2016
MANGROVE (9), 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x42 inches, Private Collection MANGROVE (6), 2016, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x40 inches, Private Collection
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MANGROVE (5), 2016, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x40 inches, Private Collection EARLY (2), 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x42 inches, Private Collection
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DANGEROUS PATH, 2015, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) Dangerous Path , 2015
BREATHE, 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 76x60 inches, Private Collection MORNING, 2016, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection
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BREATHE (2), 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches, Private Collection
NIGHTFALL, 2016, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x100 inches, Private Collection SUNKEN, 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches
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(Detail) Sunken , 2017
SPREADING TO WATER, 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x60 inches, Private Collection
SHALLOW, 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 90x64 inches, Private Collection
SUNKEN ISLAND, 2017, Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches SUNKEN ISLAND (2), 2017, Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches, Private Collection
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UNDER LIGHT AND WATER, 2017, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x156 inches, Private Collection
“Seinberg encapsulates this epic drama in transcendent works that are at once operatic and soothing. Their muted palettes are achieved by excruciating and precise additive and subtractive devices that leave only “glimpses” into what was, and then what emerged from that. These paintings and works on paper convey the unbearable lightness of being – of ebbs and flows that bring us warmth and light, as well as cool and the mysteries of the dark. His work oxygenates the soul and reawakens in the viewer a sense of awe at the immutable power of the organic universe, even as it reflects upon the most delicate nuances of its majesty. ”
128 2019Studio, 2018 - 2022
-Bill Lowe, 2019
YOU SAW YOURSELF, 2018, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches, Private Collection
...In the end you opened your eyes. You saw yourself seen by my eyes, and from my eyes you saw yourself: falling like a fruit on the grass, like a stone in the pond, you fell into yourself. -Octavio Paz (Detail) You Saw Yourself , 2018
SUNKEN 1-4, 2019, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection
135
CLOSE YOUR EYES, 2018, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection
137
COLLECTED WIND, 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x76 inches, Private Collection
SOMETIMES I CAN’T REMEMBER, 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches, Private Collection SHE FLOWS BELOW HER CLOSED EYES, 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 56x60 inches, Private Collection
141
(Detail) She Flows Below Her Closed Eyes , 2019
NOTHING THAT COMES FROM THE OTHER WORLD, 2019, Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches, Private Collection ...and I ask you for nothing, nothing that comes from the other world: only the light on the sea... -Octavio Paz
LIKE LIGHT, 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches, Private Collection LAGOON (11), 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x68 inches
147
LAGOON, 2019 WEST WIND, 2019 Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches Private Collection LAGOON, MixedMANGROVE,20192019mediaonpaper, 20x15 inches Private Collection ONLY THE LIGHT ON THE SEA, 2019 ONLY THE LIGHT ON THE SEA, 2019 Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches Private Collection SUNKEN, 2019 NEW (6), 2019 Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches Private Collection
149
IN A PERFECT WORLD, 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 76x120 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) In a Perfect World, 2019
IN A PERFECT WORLD (2), 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x42 inches IN A PERFECT WORLD (7), 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches
155
IN A PERFECT WORLD (4), 2019, Oil and graphite on canvas, 76x60 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) In a Perfect World (4), 2019
LAGOON (12), 2019, Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas, 70x90 inches, Private Collection
IN A PERFECT WORLD (8), 2020, Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas, 60x100 inches
163 PERFECT WORLD (2), 2019,Mixed media on peper, 16x12 inches PERFECT WORLD (1), 2019,Mixed media on peper, 16x12 inches NEW (4), 2019,Mixed media on peper, 16x12 inches NEW (5), 2019,Mixed media on peper, 16x12 inches Private Collection
TOUCH, 2020, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x70 inches, Private Collection
Lagoon, 2020, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches, Private Collection
SHIFT, 2020, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x60 inches, Private Collection
MORNING, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 30x57 inches I AM WAITING, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 38x30 inches, Private Collection
171
CONNECTED (2), 2020, Mixed media on paper, 18x15 inches CONNECTED (1), 2020, Mixed media on paper, 18x15 inches CONNECTED (3), 2020, Mixed media on paper, 20x26 inches
173
LAGOON (16), 2021, Oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas, 76x120 inches, Private Collection
HOVER, 2020, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches
I LIVE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 2020, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x80 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) Live in the Twenty-first Century, 2020
LAGOON (18), 2020, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x80 inches, Private Collection CLEARED, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 50x64 inches
185
CHANGE, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches
LISTEN, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches I HAVE SEEN ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT I HAVE SEEN TOO MUCH, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches
189
(Detail) Listen, 2021
LIFT, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches MORNING, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches
193
YOUR, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches YOUR (2), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches PATH (3), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches, Private Collection PATH (4), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches
195
LIGHT, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches LIGHT (2), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches
ONLY LIGHT, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches SUSPENDED, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 22x15 inches
PATH (5), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches PATH (6), 2021, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches
201
REST (2) 2021, Oil, acrylic and graphite on linen, 38x60 inches REST, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 38x60 inches
203
LOST MEMORY, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches YOUR BODY SPILLED ON MY BODY, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches
205
TRUTH OF WATER, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches, Private Collection
(Detail) Truth of Water, 2021
ONLY LIGHT, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches, Private Collection NOW, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches, Private Collection
211
I SLEPT IN YOUR HEAD, 2021, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x80 inches
(Detail) Slept In Your Head, 2021
TRUTH OF WATER (2), 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches CHANGE (2), 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 80x64 inches
217
NOT EVEN YOURSELF, 2022, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches EMPTIED, 2022, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches
219
FALLEN, 2022, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches
ALSO NAKED IN THE LIGHT, 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x70 inches
ONE IS THE OTHER, 2022, Oil and graphite on linen, 38x30 inches SUSPENDED (2), 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 60x50 inches
225
SUSPEND, 2022, Oil, acrylic and graphite on linen, 38x60 inches
LIGHT (3), 2022, Mixed media on paper, 20x15 inches YOUR BODY SPILLED ON MY BODY, 2022, Mixed media on paper, 26x20 inches
229
YOUR BODY SPILLED ON MY BODY (2), 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x60 inches
(Detail) Your Body Spilled On My Body (2), 2022
UNDER LIGHT, 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 64x50 inches THIRD BOOK ON LIGHT AND SHADE, 2022, Oil and graphite on canvas, 70x60 inches
235
LAST NIGHT I SLEPT IN YOUR HEAD, 2022, Oil, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 72x140 inches
I Slept In Your Head, Studio 2021
244 STEVEN SEINBERG 1969 Born: Brooklyn, New York 1994 BFA: Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, Georgia 2001 MFA: Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia Solo Exhibitions:
2022 Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 2021 Foosaner Museum, “Steven Seinberg”, Melbourne, Florida 2019 Bill Lowe Gallery, “Only the Light on the Sea”, Atlanta, Georgia 2017 Soren Christensen Gallery, “Under Light and Water”, New Orleans, Louisiana Foosaner Museum, Frits Van Eeden Gallery, Melbourne, Florida Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia 2016 Bryant Street Gallery, “Recent Paintings”, Palo Alto, California Soren Christensen Gallery, “Point of Origin”, New Orleans, Louisiana 2015 Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia 2014 Soren Christensen Gallery, “Water’s Edge”, New Orleans, Louisiana 2013 Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2012 Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Gallery One, Nashville, Tennessee 2011 Selby Fleetwood Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico Haen Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2010 Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 2009 Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York, New York Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2008 Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Bill Lowe Gallery, “Flows Forward”, Atlanta, Georgia Bill Lowe Gallery, “Flows Forward”, Santa Monica, California 2007 Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina 2006 Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 2005 Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2004 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Cidnee Patrick Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2003 Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica, California Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2002 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Edith Baker Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2001 Lowe Gallery, “New River”, Atlanta, Georgia 2000 Lowe Gallery, “Ground Line”, Atlanta, Georgia 1999 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 1998 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Gallery Soolip, ”Ripening”, West Hollywood, California 1997 Lowe Gallery, “Changes”, Atlanta, Georgia 1996 Lowe Gallery, “New Work”, Atlanta, Georgia 1995 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 1994 Chassie Post Gallery, “Seed Series”, Atlanta, Georgia
Selected Group Exhibitions: 2022 Galeria São Mamede, Lisbon, Portugal 2021 Hamptons Fine Art Fair, Bill Lowe Gallery, Southampton, New York Bryant Street Gallery, “Luna”, Palo Alto, California 2020 Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Dimmitt Contemporary,”Art on Paper”, Houston, Texas 2019 Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Rosenbaum Contemporary, Boca Raton, Florida
2012 Hickory Museum of Art, “Waking Up With Van Gogh”, Hickory, North Carolina Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2011 Moot Gallery, “Year of the Rabbit”, Hong Kong Haen Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 2010 Asheville Art Museum, “Looking Back”, Asheville, North Carolina 2009 Verge Art Fair, Brenda Taylor Gallery- New York, Miami, Florida Craighead-Green Gallery, “Stimulate”,Dallas, Texas Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 2008 Rosenbaum Contemporary, Boca Raton, Florida Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2007 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas Rosenbaum Contemporary, Boca Raton, Florida Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2006 Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas Lowe Gallery, “In Search of Source”, Santa Monica, California 2005 Art Miami, Miami, Florida Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2004 Lowe Gallery, “15th Anniversary exhibition”, Atlanta, Georgia Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica, California Cidnee Patrick Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2003 Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica, California Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Cidnee Patrick Gallery, Dallas, Texas Lowe Gallery, “14th Anniversary exhibition”, Atlanta, Georgia 2002 Lowe Gallery, gallery artists, Santa Monica, California Huntsville Museum of Art, “Survey of Art in the Southeast”, Huntsville, Alabama Lowe Gallery, “13th Anniversary exhibition”, Atlanta, Georgia Warren Wilson College, Faculty exhibition, Asheville, North Carolina 2001 Lowe Gallery, “12th Anniversary exhibition”, Atlanta, Georgia University of North Carolina Gallery, Faculty exhibition, Asheville, North Carolina 2000 Lowe Gallery, “11th Anniversary exhibition”, Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta College of Art Gallery, “Alumni exhibition”, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia 1999 Lowe Gallery, Donald Sultan, Attila Richard Lukacs, Markus Lupertz, Steven Seinberg, Atlanta, Georgia Lowe Gallery, “10th Anniversary exhibition”, Atlanta, Georgia 1998 Olga Dollar Gallery, “Abstraction Redefined”, San Francisco, California Gallery Soolip, “Retrospective”, West Hollywood, California Olga Dollar Gallery, “Context”, San Francisco, California Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta College of Art Gallery, “Alumni exhibition”, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia 1997 Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 1996 Allene LaPides Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1995 Lowe Gallery, “Something for Everyone”, Atlanta, Georgia 1993 Chassie Post Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta College of Art Gallery, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia
245
2018 Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Dimmitt Contemporary, Houston, Texas 2017 Bryant Street Gallery, Palo Alto, California Art Wynwood, Rosenbaum Contemporary, Miami, Florida 2016 Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2014 Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana 2013 artMRKT, Bryant St Gallery, San Francisco, California Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana Haen Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
BILL LOWE GALLERY | Atlanta . USA GALERIA SÃO MAMEDE | Lisbon . Portugal STEVEN SEINBERG
BILL LOWE GALLERY ATLANTA . GEORGIA