Erik Johnsen

Cubes

Signed & dated Verso. 1965 Paul Reed in 1970. He favored “staining” untreated canvas. Paul Reed, the last surviving member of the Washington Color School, who explored the complexities of color and form in vibrant bio-morphic and hard-edge abstract paintings, died on Sept. 26 at his home in Phoenix. He was 96. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Jean Reed Roberts. Mr. Reed acquired his public identity as an artist when he was included, along with Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Thomas Downing and Howard Mehring, in “The Washington Color Painters,” a landmark traveling exhibition that began at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1965. All of the other painters had been shown, the year before, in “Post-Painterly Abstraction,” a 31-artist exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized by the critic Clement Greenberg in an effort to write a new chapter in the historic march of abstract art. Like his fellow Washington artists, Mr. Reed rejected the hot, gestural approach of Abstract Expressionism and explored color and abstract forms in a cooler mode. Working with diluted acrylic paint, in discrete series that methodically explored formal issues, he created luminous fields of color by letting the paint bleed into, or stain, untreated canvas. “I have a saying: Pollock dripped, Frankenthaler poured,” he told The Washington Post in 2011, referring to the artist Helen Frankenthaler. “Morris Louis poured. Howard Mehring sprinkled. I blot.” In his first stained series, “Mandala,” color radiated from a circular central image. The nearly 100 paintings in his “Disk” series, which he called “a matrix for exploiting color,” consisted of a central circle and two triangles positioned at the corners of the canvas. Over the next decade he moved to hard-edge geometric zigzags and stripes in the vertical “Upstart” series, color grids and shaped canvases that allowed for more complex experiments in form and color relations. He also made welded steel sculptures and, in the “Quad” series of the 1980s, collaged photographs. “Reed was, in a sense, the ‘little master’ of that first batch of Washington colorists,” the critic Benjamin Forgey wrote in The Washington Post in 1997. “He was a latecomer — he didn’t turn seriously to painting until he was in his mid-30s — but he never considered becoming anything other than an abstract painter. And when he was ready to show, in his early 40s, he was a very good abstract painter indeed.” Mr. Reed gave himself a more modest assessment in an interview with NPR last year. “I’m sort of low man on the totem pole of that group of six,” he said. Paul Allen...

Signed lower left. About the artist: Rolph Scarlett was a painter of geometric abstraction during the American avant-garde movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Guelph, Ontario,...

Signed lower right. A major exponent of non-objective painting, Rolph Scarlett's career and artistic philosophy is closely linked with the early history of the Solomon R. Guggenhei...

Rolph Scarlett (Canadian/American, 1889 - 1984) “Geometric Composition” Signed lower right, circa late 1930’s early 1940’s 19 ½ x 26 inches Mixed media, Price on request About Rolph...

Signed verso & dated 2013. Dexter Holmes was born in Binghamton, New York in 1986 and is from first generation Italian heritage. His mother and fath...

Rande Barke (American -20th/21st Century )  “Spinal Sea” Acrylic on wood 48 x 48 inches, “49 ½ x 49 ½ inches framed size Gallery sticker on back is from G...

This piece by Harris features four original hand-cut ink paintings on paper and acrylic media on four wood panels. Harris's bands of racing abstract color offer an innate sense of rh...

Harris's overlaying of shapes, colors, and patterns creates a stunning abstract work suitable for any home or space. Yellows, oranges, and blues move rhythmically across the composit...

This abstract piece by Harris features hand-cut ink paintings on paper and acrylic media on two wood panels. Harris uses a vivid array of colors and rhythmic geometric shapes.

Harris's abstract works are a definite way to liven any home or space. This piece features hand-cut ink paintings on paper and acrylic media on wood panel. With racing bands of horiz...

Harris's rhythmic abstract forms create movement across the composition. Hues of green, orange, yellow, and others delight, surrounded by a frame of blue.

Jen P. Harris combines two hand-cut ink paintings on paper and acrylic media onto two stretched canvases. Her compositions favor bold colors, geometric shapes, and abstraction. Harri...