“Red Desert, Desert Mountain”, 2015, 72” X 72”, oil on canvas.
LAURENCE CHROMATIC
KARASEK
ABSTRACTION
Laurence Karasek and his triptych “Red Desert #10” 216” X 60”, 2016, oil on canvas.
LAURENCE KARASEK: A lifetime of looking, seeing, exploring, and creating has led Laurence Karasek to an inspiring place of artistic expression: “To paint is to invent a new language that bridges diverse realities. In this way art functions on many perceptual levels as the agent of change” Karasekʼs paintings distill the raw emotion evoked by expansive landscapes, mature groves of trees overgrown, and sculptural rocky hills. He allows the viewer to journey beyond the surface into the experience of the painting— paintings that invite travel into new realms of imagination. They bring life and energy into any space they come to inhabit, imbuing all of the objects around them with the energy of wonderment and a contrasting sense of serenity. His art surpasses intellect in favor of emotion. New Zealand, in the 1970ʼs, was where Karasek gained respect as a sculptor, artist and educator. His work was commissioned and shown in its major cities. At the university in Christchurch where he was teaching,
ARTIST, DESIGNER, EDUCATOR.
His work was commissioned and shown in its major cities. At the university in Christchurch where he was teaching, Karasek met the touring Clement Greenberg, then a leading art critic and theorist of the New York avant-garde. This encounter confirmed what he knew already as a teenager observing the behavior of American servicemen in his hometown in post-war England —he would one day live in the US. In the Fall of 1971 Laurence Karasek joined the faculty at the University of Denver. It was there when he began to merge the current and radical theories of art, the reflection of uncertainty from social upheaval and of the changing times. The Vietnam war had fractured many cultural norms and expectations. As it ended he saw opportunities to use his creative skills in new ways. H i s fi r s t U S . s o l o e x h i b i t i o n i n D e n v e r, “Connections”, happened in1972. It displayed his large steel sculptures, wax casts and found objects. The show implicitly asked viewers to define and redefine the relationships that exist between different, yet dependant phenomena.
One sculpture, a 15 feet long stainless steel arrangement of six cylinders chained together randomly, some vertical, on the floor of the gallery, was both an ambiguous and challenging walkable space that invited physical participation. The response/responsiveness strategy of behavioral psychology was in play making art. Viewer response to paintings and the space they occupy is not so very different. Almost half a century later, Karasek is fully involved in his lifelong effort to distill that strategy. He makes paintings with illusory form as a reality, the reality of two dimensions that transform representationally as the painting develops. His approach to painting brings forth not only the physical drama of oil paint on canvas but the experience as one existence (flat) with another imagined (spatial). The specificity of this contingent strategy, unfolding as it happens, is the essential unknown on a journey to someplace new. As a classically trained artist always with a subject in mind and an extensive knowledge of the history of art from his academic career, Laurence Karasek reconciles both the known and the unknown. He understands that what a masterpiece is its mystery and the power of art is
truth to the human spiritual tradition. “Art is needed more than ever now” he says. Every genuine artist understands that the portrayal of imagination, inspiration and truth is a way of creating human connections to places of wordless recognition beyond the self. Itʼs this soul- seeking, this quest for unity that is what everyone wants.”
Oil paint on canvas—whether fresh or centuries old —is all about the drama of illusion. Karasek understands this interplay as he strives to marry reality with imagination in his paintings. Each one becomes a ticket for the viewer, an all access pass with a bonus. The bonus is the viewerʼs own experiences of unfolding, blossoming, flourishing in combination with contemplating and dreaming. In his painting as in his life, Laurence Karasek identifies with the the Japanese philosophy of WabiSabi. Each moment of consequence recognizes what is, as it will, or could become as perfect imperfection. The canvas surface itself describes how a painting is structured from the first brush strokes to an emerging motif. In his painting as in his life, Laurence Karasek identifies with the
"Clouds # 6", diptych, 144" x 48", 2012 oil on canvas.
philosophy of Wabi-Sabi. Each moment of consequence recognizes what is, as it will, or could become as perfect imperfection. The canvas surface itself describes how a painting is structured from the first brush strokes to an emerging motif. The loaded brush in the hand of Karasek is a construction tool, building complex compositions of lush beauty, compilations of color and forms connecting to the deeper meanings of things. Diversity and differentiation are both formal and gestural. The raw, ruined and run—paint being applied to canvas—have meaning, literally. To comprehend the aesthetic world of professor Karasek is to grasp the notion that perfection is a moment suspended, where the new and unknown is possible, uncertainty is essential and contradiction is a work in progress. His usual practice is to make paintings from drawings or photos from visits at different locations. These drawings are the subjects for numbers of large chromatic abstractions and are worked through, often as a series. Recent series include “Red Desert” from drawings of mountains near Phoenix, “Lake Avandero” from his stay in Mexico,“Texas Oaks” from the Live Oak trees at his studio by Medina Lake in the Hill
Country and the “Swimmer” series, reflections of the sky in the water from his time in Switzerland by the Zugersee. The paintings are abstracted evocations from memory or drawings, recreations alluding to and reconnecting to the experience of how it was standing there on site. He talks about the inspiration of looking and seeing— “My paintings are energized by observed reality”, he states. Karasek is now immersed in the creation of a series that is the exploration of clouds and rivers. Heʼs made drawings of both while visiting the Verde River near Sedona, Arizona. New color combinations have emerged from the yellow, greens and blues of this high desert microclimate, a riot of vegetation with steady, distant mountains rising up. For Karasek, art is a behavior-changing reality. It is the cultural identity for who we are and provides the purpose and meaning for everything we see. We sense simultaneously what he sees and feels, being here now in the immediacy of the painting, sharing that perception not so much as an observer of nature but as a participant in its reality. As a child, Karasek depended on an imagined beauty in
spite of its absence for long periods of profound loneliness and illness during the chaos of wartime London. His inner world was strengthened with the fundamental challenges of those stark wartime years and inspired his ambition to stay connected to the beauty which sustained him. He discovered what he imagined could fill the void of isolation and loneliness. The proliferation of blank canvases waiting for invention opened for him like doors to discovery to an imagined world. Born in the south of England, Kent, known as the “Garden of England”, Laurence Karasek comes from the European tradition of the cultivated landscape and romance with nature. An art school influence, Frank Auerbach, the now famous expressionist painter of radical impasto and dramatic erasure, is of the same tradition. Both David Hockney, then an art student and the great Francis Bacon, were working in the London of the 1960ʼs when Karasek was there. They are also of this tradition of representation as artists— observers documenting what they saw in a new way. Karasek spent seven years honing his skills, first at Bromley College of Art and then the Royal Academy of Art, London, where he learned
how to draw. His draughtsmanship, the ability to render form on a surface, is fundamental to his painting. His achievements were recognized by the Royal Academy at graduation with a Leverhulme Traveling Scholarship. During a distinguished university teaching career in England, New Zealand and the USA, Karasek received many honors, awards and commissions. He left teaching and academic administration to pursue life as an artist in1978 after being Chair of the Art Department at the University of Montana. The works of artist Laurence Karasek are seen in public and private collections internationally and in solo exhibitions of painting, drawing, sculpture and design. His public involvement is in the form of sculpture commissions, landscape design and innovations in childrenʼs play environments. Interests are diverse and his creative portfolio extensive. Since 2005, working in studios in Switzerland, Texas and now Phoenix, his focus is on painting, large format paintings, known for their lyrical moments and spontaneous improvisations in a style which captures the exquisite beauty of nature without the constraint of literal interpretation.
"Lake Avandero; Two Trees", 68" x 40", 2011 oil on canvas.
"Red Desert, Desert Mountain", 72" x 72", 2014, oil on canvas.
KARASEK FINE ART
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Karasek in his studio garden in Phoenix.