The Gift of Art
2
The Gift of Art
A curated selection of ten works perfect for the holiday season
LewAllenGalleries Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com
cover: Henry Jackson, Untitled #69-17 (detail), 2017, oil & cold wax on canvas over panel, 36 x 32 in
Establishing a dynamic tension between abstraction and representation, FORREST MOSES’s monotypes of serene woodlands and placid bodies of water emphasize both the tranquility of their subject matter and the eloquence of their understated gestures. He presents an art of intimation rather than disclosure, where seasons are suggested by subtle color harmonies, expertly balanced compositions include no more than is necessary in the service of evocation, and a uniquely refined and fluid elegance informs each and every brushstroke. Forrest Moses, M 13/15, 2013, monotype, 30 x 22 in $8500
2
3
Left: John Fincher, Little Blue #6, 2011, oil on paper, 7 x 5 in $2500 Right: John Fincher, Fifteen Brush #1, 2015, oil on linen, 10 x 8 in $3500 4
Distinguished by a singular blend of sensuality and authentic realism, JOHN FINCHER's art explores diverse art historical and personal references to offer new understandings of America's natural and cultural landscapes. Exercising a profound economy of means, his works of nature-based imageryderive startling emotional resonance from a combination of rigorously balanced composition, nuanced brushwork, dramatic shadowing, and the application of intense points of contrasting colors to punctuate significant visual elements. Elsewhere, as in an enigmatic suite of shaving brush paintings, the artist transmutes commonplace objects into powerful expressions that compound the equivocal with the intensely diaristic. 5
JOHN KILEY has earned many of glass art’s most esteemed distinctions since his career’s
inception, and has been recognized for the exceptional formal refinement of his blown, carved, and polished glass sculptures, . Trained at the Pilchuck Glass School and the Penland School of Crafts, Kiley worked for Dale Chihuly’s studio at the age of 20 before winning an apprenticeship with both Dante Marioni and Benjamin Moore. In his art, Kiley updates and extends the lineage of these foremost innovators. His pieces examine the relationship between interior and exterior forms, often diluting the boundary between the two to inhabit the cusp of liminal space. His sharp eye for both color and transparency allows him to create surfaces that blur gradients between hues. A master of blowing and sculpting glass, Kiley strives “to create objects that push the material beyond its simple inherent beauty.” Right: John Kiley, Vertical Violet Peak, 2013, blown, carved & polished glass, 15 x 10 x 9 in
6
7
Skip Steinworth, Shallots, 2017, graphite on board, 7.75 x 9 in $5200 8
SKIP STEINWORTH’s radiant drawings. without
embellishment of color and rendered with extraordinary finesse and minimal context, reach for the infinite. Steinworth states, “It’s a process of mentally deconstructing, analyzing and distilling the visual essence of a subject.” In his hands, a potted plant becomes far more than just a potted plant: effortlessly, he transcends subject matter by capturing its ultimate, almost spiritual essence, what Ingres called its “inner form.” While Steinworth’s drawings, according to Art Scene Magazine, are “gutsy in their rejection of bombast,” they retain a remarkable energy in their masterful composition, evocation of light, space, and form. Like the Dutch and French old masters before him, Steinworth pays careful, almost obsessive attention to arrangement, lighting, scale and subject matter, elevating the everyday to resplendent expression.
9
JIVAN LEE’s extraordinary New Mexican vistas are visual celebrations of the land and
its ineffable mysteries. Primarily painted en-plein-air, Lee’s expeditions into the Land of Enchantment are testaments to his physical engagements with the land, and also function as visceral explorations into the sensory nature of paint itself. Up close they celebrate paint for paint’s sake – luscious, colorful, moldable. In their opulent textures, his surfaces assume the felt sensation of earth, rock, water, and sky. When viewed at a distance, the paintings collect into studies of light – a dazzling transformation that highlights the relationships between familiar image and raw material. 10
Jivan Lee, Overlook #3, 2016, oil on linen, 24 x 18 in $3000 11
Ben Aronson, Fairmont at Dusk, 2010, oil on panel, 12 x 12 in $9500
12
Ben Aronson, Gardenias in Sun, 2017, oil on panel, 12 x 12 in $8500
BEN ARONSON is recognized as one of America’s most respected painters of the
contemporary urban landscape. Aronson’s signature synthesis of realism and abstraction expressively translates the everyday reality of metropolitan forms and life – skyscrapers, stop signs, sidewalks, and pedestrians – into resplendent tableaux of urban geometry and motion, light, and color. With paintings included in the permanent collections of more than fifty museums, Aronson’s paintings of the material sensations of the city activate both memory and the imagination. Aronson’s gestural, impressionistic application of paint – while underpinned by a precision indicative of a remarkable eye for realism – conveys his imagery of streets, buildings, and faceless figures through suggestions of implied movement and space. Aside from his more typical landscape, LewAllen Galleries' recent exhibition, Perspective and the Ephemeral, also included stunning floral still-lifes that reveal Aronson’s eloquence in describing the effects of light, color and shadow on a more delicate scale. 13
HENRY JACKSON’s process is a combination of both the familiar and the abstract. His art conjures a visual landscape that ultimately exposes the ways in which transcendental moments surface to a less tangible, yet recognizable and familiar realm. "Shapes emerge and perish almost simultaneously within their environment, and this revealing does not come easy,” Jackson says. “What remains from this exhaustive struggle are agitated, irreducible forms. This tearing down of the figure is where I begin to see truth.” His use of color, coupled with the translucency of his medium, gives way to the works’ confluence of the figurative and the abstract. Right: Henry Jackson, Untitled #69-17, 2017, oil & cold wax on canvas over panel, 36 x 32 in $10000
14
15
Matthew Curtis, Incline Red and Gold, 2016-17, oil on linen, 16 x 20 in $9000
16
MATTHEW CURTIS, drawing upon an ongoing fascination with biology and architecture, creates geometric, organic forms from glass, colored oxide, and steel. His dynamic sculptures play with texture and transparency, evoking fragments of architectural space .
17
Happy Holidays from Everyone at LewAllen Galleries
18
19
Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com Prices included are current retail prices and are subject to change at any time without notice. Availability of artwork shown is subject to prior sale. Š 2017 LewAllen Contemporary LLC Artwork Š LewAllen Galleries