Donald Keefe

UNTITLED CONSTRUCT 2 - Abstract/Figurative Oil Painting in Green, Blue, & Grey

2018

Many of the works in this series have a similar viewing distance from the subject. In Untitled Construct 6 I wanted to close that distance by painting a picture with the view being c...

I have sketchbooks filled with small thumbnail drawings which I usually base compositional arrangements upon. These are non-representational: just lines, arcs, mass tones, etc – basically just playing with formal elements. I had an idea to recreate these doodles as small sculptures. I liked the results, and wanted to have it feed back into my painting work as an intermediate step. That idea grew and I began lighting the sculptures with colored lights...

"I don’t do enough red paintings. I like red, but somehow it doesn’t end up in my work all that often, or it ends up pretty muted and earthy by the end. When I was lighting the sculpture upon which this painting is based, I knew I wanted to do something with the red lights I had. As with previous work, this painting explores entanglement as both a compositional structure and as an artistic idea. The representational part of the painting is pushed as close to a photographic rendering as I could at the time. Meanwhile, I’ve contrasted that with flat graphic elements. I also wanted to do something interesting with the cast shadow of the form: whereas in some previous works in the series the main form either had a traditional cast shadow grounding the it to the illusion of a ground plane, or no cast shadow which left it floating within the shallow depth of the image, in Untitled Construct 5 I wanted to do something more specific with the cast shadow. The idea came to me to invert it to be pure white. Technically this was a bit of a challenge because the whitest oil paints take months to dry – so this work had quite a bit of ‘sit and wait time’ between layers. Personally, I enjoy the composition of this painting because the red attracts the eye towards the bottom left of the painting, but the contrasting movements in black, gray and white pull the eye up and over...

In this work, Michelle Weddle utilizes line, color, and form to create a painting which acts at the balance between the nonobjective and representation...

Artist Commentary: 2011 Keywords: abstract, blue, green, yellow, vibrant, neon, brushstrokes, paint, texture, layers, stripes Artist Biography: Adrian Negenborn is an artist livin...

Square, abstract expressionist oil painting on canvas in aqua, teal, blue, and green against pale grey with accents of yellow, peach, and mauve 'Delta' by Jenny Nelson Oil on linen, ...

Allen Kubach (American) "Untitled: Blue Linear Abstract on Green" , Oil on Canvas, Monogram signed on rear canvas, Late 20th Century, 1997 Colors: Blue and Green Allen Kubach and Marjorie Shaw Kubach were two married artists who explored their artistic styles together throughout their careers. The artists showed their works largely throughout New Jersey and New York, sometimes joining together for the same exhibits. The works that Detour Gallery has acquired are representative of the pair’s time in which they explored abstraction. These works were made in a postwar era, following the art world’s shifted focus on New York as the center for new modern art. Art at this time was evolving, and the experimentation of abstract expressionism, geometric abstraction, and minimalism evidently paved the path for later artists such as Allen and Marjorie. As noted in the New York Times by Vivian Reynor, Allen Kubach “specializes in strong colors, expressing them in vertical and diagonal grids laid one on top of another.” In such a manner, Allan reflects these contemporary ideals that were taking New York by storm in the 1960’s and 70’s. The linear focus and non objective use of color found in Allen’s work correlates to that of the pioneers of abstract and minimalistic work such as Sol Le Witt...