Nov 29, 2011

Yang Yanping

Yang Yanping at Peter Findlay Gallery


Autumn Symphony
The beauty of decay. The autumn is very colorful. Yellow, red, blue sky(on sunny days). But don't fool yourself, it's a demise. It turns the colors into black and ugly. The brown overtones shows that you understand that it's a cycle of nature. It's necessary to shred the old, so the young can grow. But still it makes you sad. The bright background is not what you think. It is not nice. It's winter.

Lloyd Martin

Lloyd Martin at Stephen Haller Gallery

Stratum
This is human memory. The vertically-aligned rectangles are events in our life. Some are better(gray), some are worse(black). The horizontal rectangles are associations, analysis and other tricks that humans do to make their life tolerable. The tricks distort the memory of events, but make the events look better than they were. The tricks tie the event blocks together, thus they provide some meaning to life.

Nov 28, 2011

Elizabeth Terhune

Elizabeth Terhune at Stand Pipe Gallery

About the moon

This is Alcoholism. The wineglasses make everything clear, bright and sterile white( bottom). The alcohol is protecting. But the blunt grey reality is still here(the upper left and upper center). The reality puts pressure on the  wineglasses. For sometime it holds, but the basis is very tipsy. In the reality corner some events made things appear upside-down or overturned. There are some glass stains apparently made with blood.

Nov 26, 2011

Weekend Edition 5

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh
The night makes everything look mysterious. People assign divine attributes to the unknown (the dark brown structure on the left). The stars have been celestial inhabitants. But people gave them human properties. Thus what we "see" in the skies is a reflection of what is going on on Earth - in the village, under the cover of darkness. The stars are persons and flows are relations and feelings that people share.

Nov 25, 2011

Diane Churchill

Diane Churchill at SOHO20 Gallery



Coming Into Orange
This is girl's love. There are lots of pink naive expectations and blue hopes. Then something not attractive(black, hairy) comes into her life. But under that facade there are layers of hope(blue), potential(green) and passion(yellow). When all those are uncovered, it is a start of a new world - orange glowing, feelings full love.

Nov 23, 2011

Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown at Sikkema Jenkins Co


Untitled


This is maturity of the personality. The abstract representation of a person is a circle, or a planet if you wish. Here we see that the circle is not closed yet. It moves, it changes its form and position. Some things outside the circle can be very attractive, thus the circle is not centered and moving. The personality (the circle) grows and matures as the person works (most of the time unconsciously) on his world view and life concepts.

Nov 22, 2011

Loretta Pettway

Loretta Pettway at Senior and Shopmaker Gallery


Old Beauty

She is old. But she is beautiful.She is beautiful now and she was beautiful in the old days.You can see the banners and trophies from the "youth". They are not straight. She is bended and dented.But. But she is gorgeous. You still can see the lines you had fallen in love in the first place a long time ago. Inasmuch she is not new, you love her more than before. You are more related.You have a history together. You have experienced things and events together.She became a part of you.

Nov 21, 2011

David Nadel

David Nadel at Sasha Wolf Gallery

Burn-3

This is ambitions. Everyone is going up. A lot of them got burned, broken and depressed. Just a few lucky ones survive at the top. Nevertheless everyone strives to get as high as possible. It is very hard to beat the psychology of the crowd. Is there an alternative route? And if you follow it, would make you an outcast or a new trend setter?

Nov 19, 2011

Weekend Edition 4

Gustav Klimt at ArtFinder


Danae

This is a beautiful woman in love. She gives everything: her feelings, her desires, her passion. She opens up to her lover in all her insecurity, vulnerability, imperfection. And yet she is perfect, gorgeous, tender and warm. She is Sun (orange details: hair, nipples and lips). Her love is the rain of gold to the person who can make her to fall in love with him. But all of this is covered to the outsiders by cool green fabric. The cloth hides the inner softness and lovable imperfections. The outer image is perfect, cool, inaccessible, mysterious.

Nov 18, 2011

David Antonio Cruz

David Antonio Cruz at Praxis International Art



andtheyfade,strawberryfieldsof 52
In blue water there is debris floating from a shipwreck(left part of the painting). But it is not a physical debris, it is emotional. And you can see another pile of wreckage is building in the future(the pile on the upper right). But you already have experience, so the next "shipwrecking" event will be less painful, less complicated(the pile has simpler forms). You will learn more based on the accumulated experience(the violet spots). The water is light blue, so you are hoping for the best.

Nov 17, 2011

Helene Heehyoun Chung

Helene Heehyoun Chung at Phoenix Gallery


Ravello
These are your memories.Events that happened a long time ago, so you are starting to forget details.People tend to remember only the good things. Because of forgetting details and remembering the good stuff, the past looks much more nicer and glorified than it actually was. The blue paint is to glorify the past events and put an extra gloss over them.

Nov 16, 2011

Helmut Federle

Helmut Federle at Peter Blum Gallery

Die Passage der Prismen (for FurutaOribe)
You are in a depression. Everything looks grey or black. You have one bright spot. This is your dream.This is your salvation. But to get you need to break out of your depression and get into a pragmatic, practical layer of actions (the brownish middle). Only then you could reach your nirvana.

Nov 15, 2011

Julie Davidow

Julie Davidow at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts


The New Strain # 10

This is a romantic relationship under stress.The partners are separated by a black line.The red lines are the stress and pain that they feel. The partner in the upper right corner is having an affair, because the spell of love has been broken(the part with white background, the grey lines are the new relationship). This is an old connection that got staled(the mold-like light grey lines in the upper part of the painting).

Nov 14, 2011

David Poppie

David Poppie at Paul Zoubok Gallery

Metropolis
Metropolis is a huge concentration of people. They live literally shoulder to shoulder ( those countless parallel lines). They all are trying to keep the cool poker face and some boundaries(green-blue framework).But underneath there are boiling hot(red, white) feelings, relations and events. All those are happening very dense to each other in small confinements. 

Nov 12, 2011

Weekend Edition 3

Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky


http://www.artfinder.com/work/gebirgsdorf-alexej-georgewitsch-von-jawlensky/

This is not a landscape. This is a woman, laying with her back to us. She is trying to be cool(blue), but she is not. She is waiting for you to start the first move.Her anticipation and slight arousal are shown by the red line across the bottom. the bright lines and a circle at the top are what she is fantasizing and expecting.

Nov 11, 2011

Lynn McCarty

Lynn McCarty at Nancy Hoffman Gallery


Pushing Paint
The center line of black spots is an ordinary life.It's a routine.The color spots are works that the artist produces in his life.They give color to his life. They make it more interesting. The artwork keeps his life together. The real artist can't live without art. He has to do it, because otherwise his life's backbone will crumble into pieces.

Nov 10, 2011

David Mann

David Mann at McKenzie Fine Art

Dusk
This is a poem. This is about a magical darkness. The night seduces you, while your mind is fogged by the daylight.The combination of blue, red and black gives you purple, the Wisdom. You are anticipating the night, though you are tired from the day, beige orbs.

Nov 9, 2011

Chu Teh-Chun

Chu Teh-Chun at Marlborough Gallery

MAR 08 No 14

Those big black/grey blocks is your fear. Fear to follow your dream that lies beyond this solid stone fence. The obstacle  is your rationalization not to make the jump. It's your love for stability and your dependence on familiar things that you can't stand any more.And out there lies your dream - airy, magical. It's a castle built on tree branches. The branches themselves are flying in the air. But you are imaging it very vividly. It's a new world full of wonderful things and pleasant surprises.You are not a fool, you know that new world is not perfect (grey blobs in the upper left). Your dream slowly sips through the border fence(Turquoise and red spots on the grey blocks).


Nov 8, 2011

Darby Bannard

Darby Bannard at Loretta Howard

Narni

A circle represents a person. A black circular spot on the left with red blood splashing from it is a death of a person.Contrasting white background says that was a sudden death. Probably a tragic one.The line-like cloud underneath from the bottom left to lower right is an attempt of somebody to avoid to deal with that loss.This person is in denial. The line is blurry, the denial fogs the mind and makes the (wo)man to to divert from the normal course.But the meeting with the blood is inevitable. Until you face your fear you can't move forward.

Nov 7, 2011

Annette Davidek

Annette Davidek at LITTLEJOHN Contemporary


#10-11

Those flowers are your deeds and actions. Some of them are good and altruistic, some of them are egocentric and not bad. Some of them are started as good but at the end got out to pretty bad. And we still rationalize them as not that bad(it's a flower). All these actions are influenced and are product of your past (those grey background structures). You don't realize that but your childhood trauma still gets a say in your life even when your kids go to college.

Nov 6, 2011

Weekend Edition 2

Wassily Kandinsky

Kleine Welten 1
Kleine Welten means small worlds in German. There are two worlds, divided by a thick blue diagonal line. From the fist sight they are absolutely different. But if you look carefully, you will see that actually they are built from the same elements. The elements are arranged differently, or of different size. And most important the main components clocks, that make the worlds tick, are the same mechanism. The Clocks are intersections of big black lines and red one or red, black, green rings with black ray coming out of them.

If you think that you are worlds apart from someone else, actually you have much more in common then you realize or want to admit.



Amedeo Clemente Modigliani


Female Nude
This is love. Going from bottom left corner to upper right, you have all three components of love : Pleasure, Solidarity, Peace of Mind. The first one is self-explaining. Solidarity is breasts. To show solidarity, the first thing that a person does it is to press someone to the chest. And the calm, peaceful face of the woman represents the Peace of Mind.

Nov 4, 2011

Peter Davis

Peter Davis at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.

Felt

This is sex. Pure sex.The upper corners, left and right represent a woman, bottom center is a man. They are very passionate (yellow glow). They are feeling and moving in unison (horizontal waves going from left to right).They are "diggin" each other very much, you can see it by stretching and tension in the bottom left corner that goes up the male triangle side.

Nov 3, 2011

Hernan Bas

Hernan Bas

The Coming Solitude

The person runs toward the asylum ( the black structure in the upper right). The shelter is the solitude. He wants to be alone. Everyone bothers him. Everything he sees on the road to safe haven, disgusts him(smudges and black overtones). It looks like a dumpster.BUT. What the person sees, it is only in his head. It is not real. The upper corners, left and right, show that the world is pretty much nice - blue skies, white clouds and and quiet life. This disturbed person perception is a very thin layer of decorations that he puts himself in(flat figures and grey-blue tones - cardboard and glass decorations, mirrors).

Nov 2, 2011

The importance of meta-ideas

I have an essay by an essay by Keith Garrow on abstract art. I don't agree with some points in this article. So I decided to write a reply to Keith.

Abstract art is like jazz. It's pure improvisation of your inner thoughts and feelings. Something that you can not express otherwise. But like in jazz your art piece has to have a  base melody to follow. This melody is your message, your idea, your thought, your feeling that is getting out of you onto a canvas.

When you are drawing an abstract painting, you are trying to extract a message out of your soul that can't be expressed in any other way. It could be designed very carefully. And it could be your sub-conscience talking and your hand just follows.

If you are showing your art to someone else, it means that you want to share the message you got out. Even if you yourself don't understand it completely, if at all. The second, you open up your art to see by another person, you have created a second side of the coin - the observer. He processes your art through his filters - his soul and his own personality. The observer can get a message that is absolutely different from what you have intended. And this is the beauty of abstract art. It can be interpreted in so many ways.

I have found a pretty good summary here.

Pierre Dorion

Pierre Dorion at Jack Shainman Gallery

Panels


The darker grey area from lower left to upper right this is mainstream, this is the way people do things. Some people do it in very vocal and visual way(bold lines), some are getting to the same destination in more subtle ways.Without screaming and advertising themselves at very corner.

I see here another thing. Now the light grey rectangles are the heroes. One on the left, is very stubborn and not flexible.The second on the right is compromising and making deals. The right one(pun intended) got much more (area) than the first. The borders of the areas are the bold lines. The small third area above shows that you have to be a person in order to gain something.

Nov 1, 2011

Maureen Chatfield

Maureen Chatfield at J. Cacciola Gallery

Innuendo


  You are getting a cannonball of insinuation. It's a planet, a world with different sides. It could be negative -  black. It could be innocent - white. But the innocence is a cover-up. It is mostly in the grey area between black and white. It has some flirting and playful motif - orange swirls. Sarcastic notes - black swirls. Orange-grey spots are the sexual ingredients.