Nick Peña

SPINNING PLATES - Circular Landscape Abstract Painting w/ Mid-Century Modern

2017

Coming soon

Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment. In "The Buble", Peña takes a more traditional approach to representing a house in the phase of construction with bold and vivid colors and contrasts the image with cut Sintra board slowly pulsating downward from underneath the house. The light blue of the sky contrasts with a deep orange hue for the house. The work is framed with a 1 inch white border. Nick Peña...

In "Holes and Slices", Peña creates a silhouette of house and fills it with bubbly curved shapes and contrasts them with sharpe-edged shapes that contain gradients and muted tones of aqueous colors such as teal and light blue. He balances these colors with muted tones of pink and violet. The viewer can create a house that is yet to be built in between the gaps here. In "Holes and Slices", Peña remarks on a house and landscape that has yet to be built. The aquatic nature seems to hint at the possibility of a house and landscape under water. The painting is created with watercolor and acrylic paint on paper. In the foreground we see Sintra board or flattened PVC that has been CNC routed. In the "soil" beneath the house are small bubble-like cut outs where the viewer can see through to the pattern created with watercolor and acrylic paint. Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment and national psyche. The realization that both the idealistic pursuit of happiness and the relevance of painting in a technologically driven world informs his practice. With each composition the labor begins with digital composites of a fragmented American landscape in peril —where tension lies in the contrasts between past and present, analog and digital, representation and abstraction, and stability and instability. In his most recent series the American home (stability) and fragmented and shifting landscape (instability) are veiled by a digitally produced mat. Traditionally a mat is, by definition, a flat, thin piece of paper based material included within the picture frame and serves as additional decoration when framing artwork. He activates this commonly overlooked material by using a non-traditional material, Sintra (flattened sheet of PVC), that has a negative digitally drawn image cut-out. This cut-out might, at first glance, look hand cut however, a more astute viewer would realize the precision is mechanical. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil that represents the technologically anxious precision we surround ourselves with. Nick Peña...

Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment. In "From Sea to Shining Sea" Peña takes a traditional approach to representing a house with modern architecture in what is seemingly the suburbs and contrasts the image with a more abstracted and chaotic foreground consisting of Sintra or PVC. The image is framed with a 1 inch white border. Nick Peña...

Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment. In "From the Bottom Up", Peña takes a more traditional approach to representing a landscape with bold and vivid colors and contrasts the image with a more abstracted and chaotic foreground consisting of arrows and cut Sintra board to act simultaneously as an obstruction and window into the image. The work is framed with a 1 inch white border. Nick...

"Summer's End " captures the soft patterned shadow of the leaves. This painting is is part of an on-going series that explores the light and landscape in Tennessee. Hartman creates a...

Untitled painting/collage 2022 acrylic and painted silkscreen mesh on 140 lb. cold press paper 30x22” unframed blue, green, transparent yellow on bright red irregular texture surface...

Untitled painting/collage #3 2022 acrylic and painted silkscreen mesh on 140 lb. cold press paper 30x22” unframed blue, green, yellow, white irregular texture surface abstract

This unique work on Arches watercolor paper measures 22 x 30 inches. The "ink dispersal technique" I have been incorporating into my works since 1994 is at play here, staying true to...

In my art practice I love to use bright colors which boldly contrast with complementary colors so I could get unusual original compositions and structures. The objective of this art...

This is a unique work on paper from 2020. One of my big diptychs that mirror the scale 1:1 to our human bodies (in real time!) Simultaneously a space to enter and an object that touches on ideas such as an astral body or making visible what is unseen in spiritual or morphic fields. This is 90 inches tall by 84 inches...

This superb vibrant British Abstract painting is by noted artist John Piper. It was painted 27th October 1965 at Mendham and is a watercolour and gouache composition. The stunning palette and brushwork make this a really colourful and engaging painting. It is in excellent condition as it is behind glass. A lovely example of Piper's work with echoes from the sixties. Signed lower right. Inscribed lower middle 'Mendham 27 X 65'. Provenance. Illustrated in black and white on the back cover of Marlborough/Aldeburgh Festival show catalogue 'John Piper, Suffolk Churches and Landscapes', 1966. Condition. Watercolour and gouache, 21 inches by 14 inches and in good condition. Frame. Housed in a generous surround float mounted frame and behind glass, 28 inches by 21 inches and in good condition. John Egerton Christmas Piper CH (1903-1992) was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London. He turned from abstraction early in his career, concentrating on a more naturalistic but distinctive approach, but often worked in several different styles throughout his career. Piper disliked the regime at the Royal College of Art and left in December 1929. Piper and his wife lived in Hammersmith and held a joint exhibition of their artworks at Heal's in London in 1931. Piper also wrote art and music reviews for several papers and magazines, notably The Nation and Athenaeum. One such review, of the artist Edward Wadsworth's work, led to an invitation from Ben Nicholson for Piper to join the Seven and Five Society of modern artists. In the following years Piper was involved in a wide variety of projects in several different media. As well as abstract paintings, he produced collages, often with the English landscape or seaside as the subject. He drew a series on Welsh nonconformist chapels, produced articles on English typography and made arts programmes for the BBC. He experimented with placing constructions of dowelling rods over the surface of his canvases and with using mixtures of sand and paint. With Myfanwy Evans, Piper founded the contemporary art journal Axis in January 1935. As the art critic for The Listener, through working on Axis and by his membership of the London Group and the Seven and Five Society, Piper was at the forefront of the modernist movement in Britain throughout the 1930s. In 1935 Piper and Evans began documenting Early English sculptures in British churches. Piper believed that Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque sculptures, as a popular art form, had parallels with contemporary art. Through Evans, Piper met John Betjeman in 1937 and Betjeman asked Piper to work on the Shell Guides he was editing. Piper wrote and illustrated the guide to Oxfordshire, focusing on rural churches. In March 1938 Stephen Spender asked Piper to design the sets for his production of Trial of a Judge. Piper's first one-man show in May 1938 included abstract paintings, collage landscapes and more conventional landscapes. His second in March 1940 at the Leicester Galleries, featuring several pictures of derelict ruins, was a sell-out. Piper had first met Myfanwy Evans in 1934 and early the next year, when his wife Eileen left him for another artist, Piper and Evans moved into an abandoned farmhouse at Fawley Bottom in the Chilterns near Henley-on-Thames. The farmhouse had no mains electricity, no mains water and no telephone connection. They married in 1937. They gradually converted the farm's outbuildings to studios for their artworks, but it was not until the 1960s that they could afford to modernise the property. Piper was an official war artist in World War II and his wartime depictions of bomb-damaged churches and landmarks, most notably those of Coventry Cathedral, made Piper a household name and led to his work being acquired by several public collections. Piper collaborated with many others, including the poets John Betjeman and Geoffrey Grigson on the Shell Guides, the potter Geoffrey Eastop...