Cleve Gray

Cleve Gray, Ascensions #4, Oil on Canvas, 1997

1997

This work on paper by Cleve Gray contains rich fields of saturated color punctuated by calligraphic gestures and sweeping brushstrokes. "Untitled" from 1999 consist of acrylic on Ar...

This is an abstract acrylic painting by Nicolas Carone titled 'Cavalcade,' which is from 2009, the period of the painter's life. 'Cavalcade' is a beautiful composition of splashed black and white paint. The painting is an excellent scale and is very dynamic. Carone was one of the last surviving Abstract Expressionist painters known for his figurative style based on abstract principles. The figure acts as the foundation that shapes his lyrical brushstrokes, layered drips and delicate washes. His later works successfully integrate the classical figurative tradition of his early training with the spontaneous and instinctual painting process of his AbEx contemporaries and friends such as Jackson Pollock, Sam Francis, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Conrad Marca-Relli. Nicholas Carone is best known for his association with the New York School of Abstract Expressionists who came to prominence in the 1950s. He was born to Italian immigrants in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1917, the eldest of seven children. He was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey and began attending art school on the nights and weekends at age eleven at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in Manhattan. After high school, he studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design and with Hans Hofmann before serving in World War II. In 1947 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome and spent three years in Italy on the G.I. Bill starting in 1948. In 1949, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. In Rome, living on Via Margutta, he met Alberto Burri, Conrad Marc-Relli and the surrealist Matta...

"Blood Harmony" from 2021 by Shane Tolbert is an acrylic on canvas abstract painting from the artist's most recent body of work. Blood Harmony is a term that references the sonic effect of when two or more relations harmonize together; The Louvin Brothers, a legendary sibling duo of country music, was one of the most well known example of this effect. The painting in a sense harmonizes broad, colorful stripe of color, in reds, greens, and browns, each applied using decalcomania (a painting technique developed by the surrealists which leaves a lot of the paints organization on the support up to chance) except for a single, bold, hand-painted red stripe just right of center. The painting insists on its own surface, blocking the possibility of an image plane being read into the surface of the painting, but it stands bodily at about 6 feet, reminding the viewer of a blockade or fence. Tolbert references his own space in this work, the space of his own garden, but also addresses art making and art history in a sensory composition. Tolbert navigates a vibrant intersection of modernist aesthetics, experimental paint handling, and a palette that relates to the high desert landscape of New Mexico, his home since 2017. For these new paintings and collages, Tolbert draws inspiration from his interactions and relationships with Santa Fe and the neighboring mountain towns, creating visual passages by way of movement and marks on the canvas. In a distinct shift from his last body of work, Tolbert points his observation of time from a geological and cosmic scale to a more human realm, partially guided by the isolation and contraction of time and space during the pandemic. There is a focus on time as directly related to his body: the new construction of a flower garden at his home, the course of meteorological time and its unpredictability, the difficulty of watching a parent pass from afar, to the joys of life’s milestones. As Tolbert elaborates: “This current practice of painting and collage touches on recent life events -- from the monumental to the prosaic -- interpreting memories into abstract compositions. My paintings at times are fussy and meticulous, but also seemingly unlabored, as they grasp at a visual equivalence to process collective moments of our dispassionate and chaotic world, a record.” While Tolbert’s compositions remain formally driven, he plays with and pulls at his medium to create hotly abstract paintings. He employs a paint application technique he has been utilizing and developing for over a decade: one that combines traditional modes of painting with pliable acrylic paint pours...

"Untitled", 2020, by Shane Tolbert is an acrylic on canvas abstract painting from the artist's most recent body of work. In this series, Tolbert navigates a vibrant intersection of modernist aesthetics, experimental paint handling, and a palette that relates to the high desert landscape of New Mexico, his home since 2017. For these new paintings and collages, Tolbert draws inspiration from his interactions and relationships with Santa Fe and the neighboring mountain towns, creating visual passages by way of movement and marks on the canvas. "Untitled" specifically references a certain affinity for geological time - the layering and stratification of color referencing the same in our Earth's land. Tolbert paints this painting as an exercise in endurance, beginning on one edge of the canvas, with a brush loaded with the two present colors, and running along its length as smoothly as possible. Tolbert's penchant for process painting is as honest as can be in this work. In a distinct shift from his last body of work, Tolbert points his observation of time from a geological and cosmic scale to a more human realm, partially guided by the isolation and contraction of time and space during the pandemic. There is a focus on time as directly related to his body: the new construction of a flower garden at his home, the course of meteorological time and its unpredictability, the difficulty of watching a parent pass from afar, to the joys of life’s milestones. As Tolbert elaborates: “This current practice of painting and collage touches on recent life events -- from the monumental to the prosaic -- interpreting memories into abstract compositions. My paintings at times are fussy and meticulous, but also seemingly unlabored, as they grasp at a visual equivalence to process collective moments of our dispassionate and chaotic world, a record.” While Tolbert’s compositions remain formally driven, he plays with and pulls at his medium to create hotly abstract paintings. He employs a paint application technique he has been utilizing and developing for over a decade: one that combines traditional modes of painting with pliable acrylic paint pours...

Southern California-based artist Gary Lang descends from generations of light and space, California based artists. He creates his abstract paintings of sa...

Gary Lang's CONCENTRICSQUAREFIVE from 2020 is an acrylic painting on panel. Southern California-based, Gary Lang descends from generations of light and sp...

Described as the “author of a dappled infinite,” Robert Natkin created some of the most innovative color abstractions of the late twentieth century (Carter Ratcliff, “The Dappled Inf...

CLEVE GRAY Floating Red, 1990 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 inches

Cleve Gray Ceres 1, 1966 Greece Series Acrylic on canvas 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches

Signed, dated , and titled verso: Gray - '90 / "Air Things Wear that Build This World" / 60 x 60 / acrylic

Cleve Gray Reverse Drawing 1 (blue), 1966 Reverse Drawing Series Mixed media on paper 19 3/4 x 25 1/2 inches

Cleve Gray Reverse Drawing 2 (orange), 1966 Reverse Drawing Series Mixed media on paper 19 3/4 x 25 1/2 inches

Cleve Gray Jerusalem Series, 1976 Jerusalem Series Mixed media on paper 17 1/4 x 24 inches each

Cleve Gray Roman Wall (blue), 1979 Roman Walls Series Mixed media on paper 22 1/2 x 30 inches

SHIRLEY GOLDFARB LA 8, 1969 Oil on canvas 10 x 8 inches signed on back "Goldfarb '69"

Abstract painting wherein a calligraphic brushstroke delineates a mountaintop.

Signed, dated , and titled verso: Gray - '90 / "Air Things Wear that Build This World" / 60 x 60 / acrylic

CLEVE GRAY Floating Red, 1990 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 inches

Cleve Gray Ceres 1, 1966 Greece Series Acrylic on canvas 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches

Cleve Gray Conjugations, 1975 Vermont Series Mixed media on paper 14 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches each

PROVENANCE: Ensign Bickford Aerospace Corp, Simsbury, CT Threnody (1973-74) is a 250-foot-wide site-specific painting created by Cleve Gray for the opening of the Neuberger Museum of Art.  At that time, college students across the country were demonstrating against the conflict in Vietnam, a war that they felt to be unjust and inhumane. An active anti-war supporter himself, Gray saw this as an opportunity to express his hope for humanity’s spiritual and emotional healing. Threnody is a lament for the dead on both sides of the war. Although the theme of Threnody was conditioned by current events, Gray sought a more reconciliatory image and mood. Somber grounds of red, black, green and violet delineate the four walls in the space that he envisioned as a cathedral.  Tall vertical forms engaged in a “dance of death and life...

Abstract painting wherein a calligraphic brushstroke delineates a mountaintop.