Matt Higgins

Defenders, Contemporary Abstract Landscape Painting

2024

In this piece, the use of negative space highlights each individual marks character, weight and texture. The painting explores various types of mark making and application inspired b...

This painting, titled What Remains, presents a haunting yet vivid interpretation of a barren, abstracted landscape. The composition is divided into two primary zones: a stark white f...

Abstract expressionist oil painting by contemporary Houston artist Benji Stiles. The work features gestural marks in pastel pink, purple, and green set against a grey background. Currently unframed, but options are available. Artist Biography: Born in New Orleans, Robert Benjamin Stiles (Benji) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who lives and works in Houston. He holds a B.A. from the University of St. Thomas, with a major in Art History and a minor in Studio Arts, and is currently an MFA candidate at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art). His work ranges from non-representational painting focusing on diverse mark-making and color theory to conceptual sculpture and assemblage using historical and found objects. Since 2019, Stiles has established a successful art practice at Hardy and Nance studios while exhibiting work throughout the region including three solo shows (Hardy & Nance Gallery 2020, Lonestar College 2021, G-Contemporary 2022). Recent group shows include Collect it For the Culture 2021 (curated by Robert Hodge...

This came from the collection of the Horace Richter Gallery, Old jaffa, Israel These were done in the 1990's This does not appear to be hand signed. It is signed and dated verso perhaps by gallerist. Jay Milder (born 1934) is an American artist and a figurative expressionist painter of the second generation New York School. Old Testament themes such as Jacob's Ladder and Noah’s Ark, and the Jewish mystical beliefs of the Kabbalah, are recurring themes in Milder’s paintings which are presented as archetypal images that recur in the basic karma, make-up and need of human nature. Internationally exhibited, Milder is included in the collections of many national and international museums. He has been the subject of two, recent retrospectives in Brazil in 2007 at the National Museum Brasilia and, in 2006, at the Museum of Modern Art, in Rio de Janeiro. He is renowned in Sao Paulo, one of the major international centers for street and public art, as a seminal influence on graffiti artists. Jay Milder was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1934. His grandparents, who came from the Ukraine, were descendants of the Hasidic mystic, Rabbi Nachman. As he listened to family stories his interest in spiritualism and mysticism increased, and became an important influence on his philosophy of life and art. Later, when he arrived in New York, he was drawn to the Theosophical Society and the teaching of Helena Blavatsky. In 1954 Milder visited Europe where he studied painting with André L’Hote, and sculpture with Ossip Zadkine. He spent much time studying at the Louvre Museum, and at the studio of Stanley Hayter. During his Paris years the paintings of the Jewish painter Chaim Soutine, primarily influenced him. Milder returned to the United States in 1956, and he began studying painting at the Chicago Art Institute. He exhibited with the Momentum Group, an alliance of artists who were particularly dedicated to the progression of figurative art and its global origins. In 1957, Milder spent the summer in Mexico for a summer where he exhibited in Puebla. That year he received the Mexican Government’s Honor Award for artists. In the summer of 1958, Milder studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He exhibited his work at the Sun Gallery, with his contemporaries, including Mary Frank, Red Grooms, Bob Thompson...