Forest Moses: Sylvan Waters

ForrestMoses SYLVAN WATERS

ForrestMoses S Y LVA N W AT E R S

JUNE 29 - JULY 29. 2012 DOWNTOWN GALLERY

LewAllenGalleries Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com cover: High Mountain Stream, 2012, oil on canvas, 72” x 48”

Forrest Moses: Sylvan Waters

In his most recent body of paintings and monotypes, Sylvan Waters, the acclaimed abstract landscape painter Forrest Moses places a rhapsodic emphasis upon bodies of water and their remarkable relationship to the still woods that border them. During the more than fifty years of his distinguished career, Moses has always had a special affinity for water, having painted many streams, ponds and brooks set among idyllic wooded surrounds. Yet the characteristic ability, developed over this time, to create in his art what seems more an extension of experience of place rather than its mere visual description never ceases to engage viewers with a sense of rapturous immediacy and unceasing variation.

November Reflections, 2012, oil on canvas, 36” x 96”

has also to do with what Emily Dickinson called working “without the date, like Consciousness or Immortality;” a way of becoming lost in the present and pouring oneself into the moment, utterly engaged in the creative flow that joins artist with subject. Not quite a trance it is, though, a self-forgetful process, one of connecting with the deeper meanings of things: what Moses calls “working in the zone.” For decades Moses has spent time in the woods working in that zone, looking at the water that runs through, and becoming one with it. This oneness is almost literal, of course, since he is—as are all adult humans comprised 70% of water. But the sense of identity with his subject goes beyond the physical relationship with the substance; is also a state of mind, an attitude that is palpably one of love.

What is it about water that, when made the subject of Moses’s skilled eye and hand, produces visual encounters powerful enough to activate in the viewer an imaginative memory of having been to a stream just like the one in his painting? Or even to conjure the sound of the water flowing in the brook, or crickets along the pond? Perhaps the answer has to do not only with the artist’s extraordinary technical mastery, but also with what might be thought of as a deep relationship with nature that comes only from intense, passionate involvement and study, and the ensuing impulses of lyrical moment he is driven to record in his art.

This passion the artist feels for water manifests in the sensuous brush strokes and subtle color gradients that impart a unique presence to his compositions. The accretion of gestured lines, plumes of pigment and wispy marks combine to conjure what de Kooning called the “slipping glimpse” – that fast registering of a memorable image the eye discerns nearly subliminally.

For Moses, this is abstraction that communicates and elicits recognition of the familiar, however vague. As with the almost dream-like composition in “”Details and Marks,” his painting

No doubt a part of Moses’s success in achieving this effect 2

of pure potential, and of infinite possibilities. Moses’s ability to capture these synoptic meanings in images, tuned to their highest capacity of resonance, comes from this uncanny ability to paint the experience of what is present before him.

can be a dilation of image, pushed to the outer limit of comprehension in order that one feels rather than just sees.

One of the signal aspects of Moses’s rendition of landscape is his gentle visual inference that ideas of beauty should not be taken for granted; that beauty exists in abundant varieties and in many places. The varying ways he approaches forms and compositions for subjects of works included in Sylvan Waters --from loosely abstracted evocations to more specific, detailed references --exemplify the endless ideas about aesthetics of place he has quietly explored throughout his lengthy career.

This variety illustrates the intoxicating potential that a bit of uncertainty can have—an idea constantly present in his work in opposition to preconceived notions—one that acts as a gentle corrective to static ideas about beauty and nature which, left undisturbed, can put a soul to sleep. This diversity of viewpoints about looking emerges from Moses’s unique intuition of grace in the world, awaking new modes of seeing in the viewer and melding thinking and feeling into internal reveries of perception.

In his pictures of water one senses its rhythmic vitality and calming serenity that feels seamless and immediate with one’s own memories. In Sylvan Waters, there is a particular presence in the paintings of reflection, as with “Inner Banks,” but extending also to the remarkable monotypes that are included as part of the exhibition. Here, in reflected forms, there is the idea of water’s uncanny capacity to reformulate the image of a thing or place in the way that memory reformulates experience. Or as Moses has expressed, we see beauty as the reflected energy of God. By making paintings that match experience his and ours, Moses has the uncanny capacity to impart an almost hypnotic sense of place in works that rely not on strictly literal interpretation but more loosely configured allusions. Particularly in the latest body of his work that comprises Sylvan Waters, Moses frequently employs looser brushwork and brighter hue to capture nature’s simple beauty; this is gracefully evidenced in depictions of rippling pond surfaces and reflections of grass and stark trees in still water. These he conveys with lush color harmonies and gestural expressiveness that is perhaps more allusive and less specific when compared to previous work. This looser construction elides certainty and delightfully blurs the relationship between recognition and imagination.

The images simultaneously remind and resist memory. In the doing, Moses puts us there.

Part of the distinctiveness of his work resides in the sense of simultaneity of this perception: that we see and feel in the paintings what he sees and feels, and when he sees it and feels it. Moses talks about “being here now,” the aspiration to be present to the world in his work as he wishes to be in his life. And one has a sense that this act of sharing is not just a generous gift but also the compulsion of an artist whose life purpose has been to make work as nearly a part of his experience as possible, and to make that experience a part of his work.

Many observers have suggested that in their deeply meditative appearances, Moses’s compositions serve as visual metaphors, or sanctuaries by which viewers can reflect on their own quiet moments and find a transcendent sense of peace and the sublime. Modulating within a constantly varying continuum between the more recognizable and the nearly abstract, the features of landscape in Sylvan Waters take on an internally dynamic tension that radiates nature’s own exuberant changeability and the beauty that inheres in its transition and transformation, examples of our own potential for transcendent growth.

In so doing he makes it part of the experience of those who look at his work. He is not so much an observer of nature as he is a participant in its reality. His work that is one with his world is thereby of it, and consequently part of the beauty of that world.

The marks he makes on his canvasses are like the fingerprints of his sensations. A finished painting is the gathering of these perceptions and they give us a thrum of seeing and feeling in the moment of intense clarity of the artist’s experiencing of his subject. It is a compilation on canvas of the impulses from nature that uniquely inform the way Moses makes his art.

The choice to focus on water in the current body of work is perhaps especially apt when understood in this context. It is literally a medium for shared experience. Everyone is made of it and everyone must have it to live. Water is primordial and sustaining—the source of life, representative of renewal,

Here, virtuosic depictions of water in natural settings convey both the tranquillity of the element and the artist’s masterfully expressive gesture. In these compositions, water and the surrounding woods are both elevated and pared down to their

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spiritual essence, connecting us to the artist’s quest to express the ineffably exquisite beauty of nature. In the lyrical sensation of these reductive images this beauty is not just represented but provoked vividly in the mind of the viewer.

A longstanding affinity with Japanese aesthetics and Buddhist philosophy inflects Moses’s work with simplicity and balance while visually underscoring the importance of negative space, as with the nearly ghost-like tree trunks that read as visual whispers in “High Mountain Stream,” one of the largest and most engaging of the new paintings in Sylvan Waters. This willingness to allude rather than describe allows Moses to communicate his experiences of the natural world with Zenlike restraint emanating from its own reflected beauty.

Imbuing his facility for essence rather than excess is the Japanese aesthetic of shibui, suggestive of a subtle elegance that balances simplicity with the complex. Moses’ paintings resonate with similarly manifold meanings; they contain the exhilaration of spontaneity and improvisation but are anchored by an underlying enduring calm. His paintings take the viewer beyond the mere image of a landscape and into a deeply personal experience of the place itself. Indeed for Moses, painting nature is a form of spiritual practice, as he avers in his book, Forrest Moses, published by Kensho Editions in 2001: “I believe being awake—fully awake—is the whole point. Being awake gives one access to the true nature of living and being in the moment.…My work is to discover nature’s truth and give life to a painted image by understanding the rhythms and pulses behind appearances.”

-Kenneth R. Marvel

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Details and Marks, 2012, oil on canvas, 52” x 50” 5

Mountain Water, 2012, oil on canvas, 48” x 72” 6

A Piece of Pond, 2012, oil on canvas, 48” x 72” 7

Quiet Water, 2012, oil on canvas, 48” x 50” 8

Inner Banks, 2012, oil on canvas, 50” x 52” 9

Deep Wood Pond, 2012, oil on canvas, 48” x 72” 10

Dark Forest Silent Pond, 2012, oil on canvas, 50” x 66” 11

Botswana, 2012, oil on canvas, 50” x 52” 12

A Bit of Stream, 2012, oil on canvas, 50” x 52” 13

M 12/10, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 14

M 12/08, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 15

M 12/01, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 16

M 12/7, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 17

M 12/09, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 18

M 12/06, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 19

M 12/11, 2012, Monotype, 41” x 29” 20

M 12/12, 2012, Monotype, 34” x 47” 21

M 12/05, 2012, Monotype, 30” x 22” 22

M 12/04, 2012, Monotype, 30” x 22” 23

Forrest Moses

Born: 1934, Danville, VA Education: Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA (BFA, 1956) | Studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, (1960-62) SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2011 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2010 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2009 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM

David Findlay Jr. Fine Art, New York, NY 2008 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2007 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

Edenhurst Gallery, Palm Desert, CA 2006 Meredith Long Gallery, Houston, TX

LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2005 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2004 Susan Duval Gallery, Aspen, CO

LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2003 Meredith Long Gallery, Houston, TX

LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2002 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2001 Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York, NY 2000 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 1999 Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York, NY 1998 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 1997 Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York, NY 1996 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 1994 I. Wolk Gallery, St. Helena, CA 1993 Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1991 Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1989 Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Gump’s Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1987 Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1986 Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Peregrine Press, Dallas, TX

Sheldon Memorial Museum Gallery, Lincoln, NE

Watson Gallery, Houston, TX 1984 Watson/de Nagy Gallery, Houston, TX

Egrets Gallery, Pasadena, CA

St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM 1983 Watson/de Nagy Gallery, Houston, TX

Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY

Carson-Sapiro Gallery, Denver, CO

Eason Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Wildline Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 1982 Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY 1981 Spoleto Festival USA, Charleston, SC 1980 Watson/de Nagy & Company, Houston, TX

The Art Center, Waco, TX 1979 Hills’ Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Illinois State University, Normal, IL

Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM

Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY 1978 Museum of Fine Arts, Danville, VA

Foster/White Gallery, Seattle, WA

1977

1976 1975 1974

1973 1972 1971 1969 1968 1967 1966 1965 1961

Watson/de Nagy & Company, Houston, TX Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco, CA Delahunty Gallery, Dallas, TX Janus Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Smither Gallery, Dallas, TX Watson/de Nagy & Company, Houston, TX Janus Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Wichita Falls Museum & Art Center, TX Janus Gallery, Santa Fe, NM David Gallery, Houston, TX Stratford College, Danville, VA David Gallery, Houston, TX David Gallery, Houston, TX David Gallery, Houston, TX Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Los Angeles Art Show (exhibited by LewAllen Contemporary,

Santa Fe, NM) at Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, CA 2006 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, Painting – Alive

and Well! Eight Master Artists

LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM, Diptychs 2001 I. Wolk Gallery, St. Helena, CA 1996 Lizardi-Harp Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1995 Susan Duval Gallery, Aspen, CO 1994 Art Thomas Gallery, Charleston, SC 1992 Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai, Japan; traveling exhibition

throughout Japan 1991 Damian Art, Sapporo, Japan

Damian Art, Tokyo, Japan

World Collection, Yokohama, Japan

Galerie Miyabe, Okinawa, Japan

Galerie Miyabe, Fukuoka, Japan

Crane Art, Nagoya, Japan

Crane Art, Ikebukuro, Japan

Crane Art, Tokyo, Japan

Art Dumonde, Tokyo, Japan 1987 McNay Art Museum, Austin, TX, Paper Works II 1985 Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, Contemporary American

Monotypes

Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, Egypt 1984 Museum of Art of the American West, Houston, TX,

Contemporary Western Landscape 1983 Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, American Artists as

Printmakers,

23rd National Print Exhibit

Connecticut College, New London, CT, Print Invitational

Thorpe Intermedia Gallery, Sparkhill, NY, New York

Realists ’80

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1979 Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC, Art of Paper ’79 1978 Wave Hill, New York, NY, The Landscape: Different Points of View 1976 Arco Center for Visual Arts, Los Angeles, CA

Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM

Roswell Museum, Roswell, NM 1975 Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK, Contemporary Landscape Painting 1974 Abilene Fine Arts Museum, Abilene, TX

Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, TX, Twelve from New Mexico, traveling exhibition

Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont, TX

Tyler Museum, Tyler, TX

Wichita Falls Museum & Art Center, Wichita Falls, TX 1972 Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM 1966 Monterey Peninsula Museum, CA 1964 Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont, TX

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX 1961 Pratt Institute, New York, NY

1982 1981

1980

Keisey Seybold Clinic, Houston, TX Kimberly Clark, Dallas, TX La Paloma Hotel, Tucson, AZ Little Neil, Aspen, CO LTV Corporation, Dallas, TX Mellon Bank, Pittsburgh, PA Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC Mobil Oil Company, Dallas, TX Mountain Bell, Denver, CO Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM Oppenheimer Management, New York, NY Owens Corning Fiberglass, Toledo, OH Pfizer, Inc., New York, NY Phillips Petroleum, Denver, CO The Phoenician Hotel, Phoenix, AZ Princeton University Prudential Insurance Company of America, Newark, NJ RCA, New York, NY Rainer Bank, Seattle, WA Roswell Museum of Art, Roswell, NM Simpson Timber Company, Seattle, WA Spanish Bay Resort, Pebble Beach, CA Sunwest Bank, Albuquerque, NM Tesoro Petroleum, San Antonio, TX Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX Tobin Group, San Antonio, TX Touche-Ross, San Francisco, CA United Airlines, Denver, CO US Tobacco Company, Greenwich, CT Westin Hotel, Dallas, TX Wilson Industries, Houston, TX

Abilene Fine Arts Museum, Abilene, TX Sioux City Arts Center, Sioux City, IA Salina Arts Center, Salina, KS Wyoming State Museum, Cheyenne, WY Spiva Art Center, Joplin, MO Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE San Antonio Museum of Art, TX University of Houston, TX Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, NY, Monotype

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Amerada Hess Corporation, New York, NY American Telephone & Telegraph, New York, NY Ana Hotel, Tokyo, Japan Beatrice Foods, Chicago, IL Chicopee Manufacturing Company, Nautcenswick, NJ Citibank, New York, NY Deloitte Touche, Washington, DC CRS Design Associates, Houston, TX Dallas Arboretum, Dallas, TX Diamond Shamrock Corporation, Dallas, TX First National Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, AZ General Electric, Fairfield, CT W.R. Grace & Company, Dallas, TX Grand Hyatt, Washington, DC Gulf Oil Company, Houston, TX Hilton Hotel, Chicago, IL Hospital Corporation of America, Houston, TX Houstonian Hotel, Houston, TX Hughes Aircraft, GA Huntington Gallery, University of Texas, Austin, TX Libby Oppenheimer IBM, Tucson, AZ Illinois State University, Normal, IL InterFirst Bank, Dallas, TX Kaiser-Permanente, Denver, CO

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Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com