Crossroads Lynette Lombard David Paulson Thaddeus Radell SEPT 6-OCT 10 2017
319 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn NY 718-486-8180 ¡ hrs 12-6 thurs-sun www.sideshowgallery.com
Crossroads Lynette Lombard David Paulson Thaddeus Radell David Paulson
SEPT 6-OCT 10 2017
2017 oil/canvas 48 x 60 in.
Opening reception Fri Sept 8 6-9pm
By Another Name (detail)
Thaddeus Radell Fallen Man
2017 oil/wax on panel 48 x 62 in.
Mind of a Painter By Peter Acheson The poet Gary Snyder when asked to define Mind replied: ”We are acquainted with the Unconscious; add to that one’s digestion, one’s breathing, then add the weather and one’s circulation, as well as all the phenomena that we call Nature. And keep in mind, this is NOT a metaphysical abstraction. In other words—Mind is granite, Mind is wood, Mind is red tailed hawk…” The three painters in the exhibition before you might add, “Mind is paint.” Their paintings begin, and end, in Matter. Each takes care to remind the viewer that paint is stuff, earth, colored dirt, and the effort to breathe life into it is an act of creation, not unlike the creation of Adam from earth. We, the viewers, think we know what we are looking at. But do we? Are these images the result of ‘what’, or ‘how’? Or is the how com-
menting on the what, arguing with it? How can paint, slathered, brushed, scraped, rubbed, and/or otherwise distressed be a figure, a landscape, a cloud, a gathering of tribal figures near a stream? Bob Dylan says, “IMPOSSIBLE!!! as he hands you a bone!” But bones here are all we have to go on... We do have historical precedent. The evidence of expressionist painters, so-called, such as Soutine, Segers, de Kooning. Also the Great Bathers of Cézanne as well as Matisse’s Moroccans and Bathers by a River. Those painters worked from the outside in. Paulson, Radell, and Lombard work from the inside out. Their ‘whats’ are the results of the how. Or, as the poet Philip Whalen noted: “The mind perceives / What the hand cannot foretell”. The narratives can be read and meanings speculated on. but something new is happening within traditional structures here. Re-examining, re-visioning, re-visiting cultural traditions serve what James Hillman calls “the regressive needs of the Soul.” Old territory recrossed, new wine in old bottles. In the work of all three, image begins with paint and activity. Their images suggest narratives, but narratives in which the voice and the story are interchangeable, indeed the same substance. Paulson’s narratives take place within a stage set like Beckett’s. Blasted, torn down, reassembled, with the stage crew working while the actors rehearse. But it’s not a rehearsal! Each rehearsal is the play itself, while the director calls out directions to the lighting staff in full earshot of the audience.
David Paulson
Flay Steak
2015 oil/canvas 48 x 60 in.
Lynette Lombard Tree in Winter
2011 oil/canvas 69 x 62 in.
Lombard’s landscapes seek to reinsert specific landscapes, emotionally significant to the artist, into dramatic situations of color, as if she had one moment, only a few seconds long to sum up her feelings, perform her passions. The wave breaks, and the sea has washed up only a painting. One turns to the next wave. Radell’s heads and figures emerge from their leaden fields as cave images emerge from calcined walls. Half lit, half remembered, they come forward and slip back like scenes from dreams, like ghosts appearing in the moments before waking, and evade interpretation. By turning away from ‘progress,’ slickness, irony, and embracing what appear at first as traditional structures, Lombard, Radell, and Paulson remind us that paintings are still, with poetry, the most personal of expressive freedoms. They are speaking for themselves and we are the richer for their research. They remind us as well that there is no ‘bottom’ to history, and history is a zone where the past is continuously reinvented.
Lynette Lombard
Chautauqua Tree, Storm
2012-15 oil/canvas 30 x 30 in.
Above:
Suckerpunch
2013-17 oil/canvas 58 x 76½ in. Left:
Midnight
2017 oil/linen 65 x 75 in.
Rock Slide
2017 oil/linen 32 x 40 in.
The Light of Night
2017 oil/linen 65 x 75 in.
Above:
Buffalo Wallow
2017 oil/canvas 12 x 14 in. Right:
Blue Rocks
2017 oil/canvas 26 x 26 in.
David Paulson
Scarborough Beach
2017 oil/canvas 16 x 22 in.
Toothpick
2015 oil/canvas 48 x 64 in.
By Another Name
2017 oil/canvas 48 x 60 in.
Remnant
2015 oil/canvas 48 x 60 in.
Jelly Road
2014 oil/canvas 18 x 24 in.
Hound and Hunted
2015-16 oil/canvas 48 x 64 in.
The Pugilist
2015-16 oil/canvas 44 x 60 in.
Thaddeus Radell
Above:
Purgatorio
2017 oil/wax on panel 58 x 96 in. Following pages:
The Acheron
2017 oil/wax on panel 48 x 100 in.
Head Study I
2017 oil/wax on panel 20 x 16 in.
Head Study II
2017 oil/wax on panel 20 x 16 in.
Exit the King
2017 oil/wax on panel 48 x 114 in.
Orchard (Vaucluse)
2017 oil/wax on panel 30 x 40 in.
Through the Woods
2017 oil/wax on panel 16 x 20 in.
Lynette Lombard received her MFA from Yale University, B.A.Honours from Goldsmiths’ College of Art, University of London and attended the New York Studio School for two years. She is a Professor of Art at Knox College in Galesburg, IL. Lombard has received Mellon Grants to Berlin and Spain, the Philip Green Wright-Lombard Award for Distinguished Teaching, Research grants from Knox College and was a finalist for the Gottlieb prize. She is represented by the Bowery Gallery, NY, Confluence Collective in Spain, the Midwest Paint Group and Seven on Site, a group of American landscape painters David Paulson was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1955. He is an alumnus of the Swain School of Design and the Parson’s School of Design Graduate Program for Painting, where he studied with Leland Bell and Paul Resika, both of whom were strongly influenced by Hans Hofmann’s work. He has taught at the Swain School of Design, New York Studio School, Parsons School of Design, Sarah Lawrence College, New York Studio School, and IS183. He left NYC for the Hudson Valley region in 1994. Paulson was awarded the Purchase Prize for Painting at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2014. Born and raised in Michigan, the son of two artists, Thaddeus Radell completed his B.F.A. at the University of Detroit/Mercy before moving to New York City to study at Parsons School of Design with Paul Resika, Leland Bell and Jack Heliker. In 1984 he moved to France, where he spent the next 14 years, dividing his time between studios in Paris and Provence. In 2000 he returned to New York City, where he presently maintains a studio in Long Island City and is an Associate Professor of Painting and Director of Studio Art at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Right:
Lynette Lombard
Rock Slide (detail) 2017 oil/linen 32 x 40 in. Back cover:
Thaddeus Radell
Acheron (detail) 2017 oil/wax on panel 48 x 100 in.