Thaddeus Radell

Drawings from Mt Gretna, III

2020

"My work principally consists of deeply abstracted figure compositions--intuitive constructions that begin with random marks establishing larger masses of torsos, heads, and limbs in an undefined setting. The emphasis is almost purely on intuition. The figures are born of their surrounding environment, emerging only partially and fugitively from the layers of pigment. A narrative is evident but never overt. A crown, a shield, a boat, a wheel. Though the subject has recently coalesced around my reading of Dante and Shakespeare, the settings remain extremely vague- a beach, an interior, a woodland. The paintings are, in the end, meditations on the relationship between the protagonists in a wordless drama. In my paintings, I use a cold wax medium combined with dry pigments, oil paint, and embedded fragments of burlap. The surfaces eventually build up into a dense, rugged terrain." --Thaddeus Radell

Statement "These topics have excited my imagination and established for me an almost mystical foundation for painterly expression. Their poetic symbolism represents and parallels cer...

From a series done after a visit to Lucca, Italy. Done with brush on sturdy Italian watercolor paper. Mostly figurative- many with wings- against a gray brushstroked background depic...

Figure is an original artwork realized in the 1970s by the Italian Contemporary artist Leo Guida (1992 - 2017). Original drawings in China Ink and Watercolor on paper. Good condi...