Dion Johnson

Mercury Curtain

2019

acrylic on paper Dion Johnson’s studio practice exists at the intersection of intention and reaction. His pared down visual vocabulary in combination with hard-edged abstraction res...

acrylic on paper Dion Johnson’s studio practice exists at the intersection of intention and reaction. His pared down visual vocabulary in combination with hard-edged abstraction res...

b. Melbourne, Australia Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light, and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted color, and a reduction of form and means. Identifying with Reductivism’s simplicity, Blyton’s shaped canvases and three-dimensional wall sculptures elevate craftsmanship and process, achieving a compositional clarity that unifies color and form. To construct her works, Blyton covers custom built balsa wood stretchers with raw linen, adorning them with layers of pure pigment or acrylic paint. Each pigment reacts differently to raw linen and requires a specific number of coats to reach the artist’s desired level of saturation. As the artist explains, “I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works even if the color being used is loud.” The artist creates her own spatial dimension by manipulating the shape of the canvas, which escapes from the flat surface of the wall, confusing its role as a painting. “Rather than responding to the architecture they ask particular attributes of the building to act as support,” as some works appear to climb the surface of the walls, while others straddle columns and corners. Louise Blyton lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia in 1988. Her works are held in significant corporate and private collections in Australia, China, France, United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States. Since 2000, Blyton has run an artist supply store called, St. Luke Artist Colourman, which specializes in professional paint and raw materials, with her husband David Coles.

b. Melbourne, Australia Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light, and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted color, and a reduction of form and means. Identifying with Reductivism’s simplicity, Blyton’s shaped canvases and three-dimensional wall sculptures elevate craftsmanship and process, achieving a compositional clarity that unifies color and form. To construct her works, Blyton covers custom built balsa wood stretchers with raw linen, adorning them with layers of pure pigment or acrylic paint. Each pigment reacts differently to raw linen and requires a specific number of coats to reach the artist’s desired level of saturation. As the artist explains, “I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works even if the color being used is loud.” The artist creates her own spatial dimension by manipulating the shape of the canvas, which escapes from the flat surface of the wall, confusing its role as a painting. “Rather than responding to the architecture they ask particular attributes of the building to act as support,” as some works appear to climb the surface of the walls, while others straddle columns and corners. Louise Blyton lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia in 1988. Her works are held in significant corporate and private collections in Australia, China, France, United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States. Since 2000, Blyton has run an artist supply store called, St. Luke Artist Colourman, which specializes in professional paint and raw materials, with her husband David Coles.

b. Melbourne, Australia Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light, and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted color, and a reduction of form and means. Identifying with Reductivism’s simplicity, Blyton’s shaped canvases and three-dimensional wall sculptures elevate craftsmanship and process, achieving a compositional clarity that unifies color and form. To construct her works, Blyton covers custom built balsa wood stretchers with raw linen, adorning them with layers of pure pigment or acrylic paint. Each pigment reacts differently to raw linen and requires a specific number of coats to reach the artist’s desired level of saturation. As the artist explains, “I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works even if the color being used is loud.” The artist creates her own spatial dimension by manipulating the shape of the canvas, which escapes from the flat surface of the wall, confusing its role as a painting. “Rather than responding to the architecture they ask particular attributes of the building to act as support,” as some works appear to climb the surface of the walls, while others straddle columns and corners. Louise Blyton lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia in 1988. Her works are held in significant corporate and private collections in Australia, China, France, United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States. Since 2000, Blyton has run an artist supply store called, St. Luke Artist Colourman, which specializes in professional paint and raw materials, with her husband David Coles.

b. Melbourne, Australia Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light, and ...

Jane Sangerman lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has had on...

In Baker’s work, there is solace in the geometry of fundamentals, and a practice that focuses on the ephemeral nature of paper and the ease of its transportability, which allows her to create large-scale constructions. A desire for definitive certainties and incontrovertible truths in an era of “alternative facts”, precipitate the need for Baker to assert her clarification of evidence. A new major installation has been created for her exhibition at ODETTA that layers baroque design elements found in paper cup carrying trays with anxiety-provoking phrases, rendered as gorgeous, yet fragile paper spheres...

In Baker’s work, there is solace in the geometry of fundamentals, and a practice that focuses on the ephemeral nature of paper and the ease of its transportability, which allows her to create large-scale constructions. A desire for definitive certainties and incontrovertible truths in an era of “alternative facts”, precipitate the need for Baker to assert her clarification of evidence. A new major installation has been created for her exhibition at ODETTA that layers baroque design elements found in paper cup carrying trays with anxiety-provoking phrases, rendered as gorgeous, yet fragile paper spheres...

In Baker’s work, there is solace in the geometry of fundamentals, and a practice that focuses on the ephemeral nature of paper and the ease of its transportability, which allows her to create large-scale constructions. A desire for definitive certainties and incontrovertible truths in an era of “alternative facts”, precipitate the need for Baker to assert her clarification of evidence. A new major installation has been created for her exhibition at ODETTA that layers baroque design elements found in paper cup carrying trays with anxiety-provoking phrases, rendered as gorgeous, yet fragile paper spheres...

In Baker’s work, there is solace in the geometry of fundamentals, and a practice that focuses on the ephemeral nature of paper and the ease of its transportability, which allows her to create large-scale constructions. A desire for definitive certainties and incontrovertible truths in an era of “alternative facts”, precipitate the need for Baker to assert her clarification of evidence. A new major installation has been created for her exhibition at ODETTA that layers baroque design elements found in paper cup carrying trays with anxiety-provoking phrases, rendered as gorgeous, yet fragile paper spheres. This collapsible, frantic universe parallels the global climate created by our current administration. Nancy Baker is compelled to put things together; underscoring the process of combining and interlocking forms in elegant configurations, she interweaves mathematical data in her constructions that speak to her need for stasis and a reliable reality. The recently new experience of living once again in an urban environment has made her sensitized to the dominating forces of infrastructure, and to those corresponding interstitial spaces that, arouse wonder and anxiety. The competition for space and sky has been instructive; her work reflects this struggle by recreating the battlefield in the studio, and attempting to tame it, and ultimately, to own it. For the exhibit, No Regrets, Baker seizes upon current political anxiety that informs her series of works which employ text from the US Constitution, in addition to mathematical constructs such as Pi, and the Golden Section...

In Baker’s work, there is solace in the geometry of fundamentals, and a practice that focuses on the ephemeral nature of paper and the ease of its transportability, which allows her to create large-scale constructions. A desire for definitive certainties and incontrovertible truths in an era of “alternative facts”, precipitate the need for Baker to assert her clarification of evidence. A new major installation has been created for her exhibition at ODETTA that layers baroque design elements found in paper cup carrying trays with anxiety-provoking phrases, rendered as gorgeous, yet fragile paper spheres...