| The Painted Path
Contemporary Abstraction in Painting
... 9 May - 14 June 2003
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GARY KOMARIN
A Suite of Blue Sea in Cornflower
Blue, No. 2 |
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Frank Bowling
About the artist...
By reputation, Bowling is one of the most cunning manipulators
of paint; that is, paint as material substance, the equivalent of
sound to a musical composer. The paint is mixed in with resin or
applied straight from the tube, or diluted with water. It is rubbed
in, smudged, smeared, dripped, dragged, dribbled, poured and even
sprayed on using a technique that is difficult to make out. Microscopic
dots, splashes and drips of paint are woven together into a compelling
visual narrative.
Born in Guyana in 1936, Frank Bowling is widely considered
one of the most distinguished black artists to emerge from post-war
British art schools. He belongs to the famous class of 1962 at the
Royal College of Art, which included David Hockney, Derek Boshier
and Peter Phillips, the generation who laid the foundation of Pop
Art in Britain. At graduation, Hockney won the gold medal while
Bowling won the silver. A transfer of residence to New York a few
years after graduation exposed Bowling to his American contemporaries
and won him a place in the 1971 Whitney Biennial. Since that time
Bowling has been awarded not one but two Guggenheim Fellowships.
Betsy Fifield
About the artist...
Fifield’s first abstract drawings consisted of small marks
and an occasional word or figure. A small circle or squiggle repeated
like a mantra, soon gave way to the meandering line. Recent paintings
and drawings of the last two years comprise washes and wipes to
form the ground. Overlaid drips and dribbles are poured in different
densities and configurations. By being open to the interactions
of liquid incidents, she constructs a map of different exploratory
lines and their varying intersections. These paintings are testimonies
of observed wanderings and intricate networks.
American artist Betsy Fifield studied extensively from 1999-2001
with the acclaimed American artists, Timothy Berry, Emily Cheng
and Roberto Juarez and was awarded the title of Best New Artist
by The Aspen Magazine in 2001. Having previously exhibited in America
and worked mainly to commission, this is the first showing of her
work in the United Kingdom.
Gary Komarin
About the artist...
"Komarin's paintings and drawings are marvellous - plastic,
sensitive and serious, his feelings for line, space and form comprise
and innate sense of structure."
Philip Guston, Artist
Komarin works with recurrent motifs such as cakes, vessels, hats
and wigs. The forms are quite abstract, obscure and partially recognisable.
Using a cartoon-like expressionist style he presents his objects
playfully yet they are ultimately serious and mysterious, exposing
complex emotions.
Born in Manhattan in 1951, Gary Komarin received a graduate
teaching fellowship at Boston University where he studied with Philip
Guston. Komarin was offered his first teaching position at Hoabrt
and William Smith Colleges in 1978. He subsequently taught at The
University of Oregon, Southern Methodist University and the Universtity
of Iowa. Komarin received The Joan Mitchell Prize in Painting in
1999 and has also received the Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship
in Painting, The Elizabeth Foundation, New York/Grant in Painting,
The Rutgers University Fellowship in Innovative Printmaking, a grant
from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Philip Hulitar
Award in Painting. He has been exhibiting internationally since
1979 and has works in numerous private, corporate and museum collections
including The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Newark Museum,
The Montclair Museum, Microsoft, ATT and the Nordstrom Corporation.
Komarin lives and works in the wooded hills West of New York.
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