Thaddeus Radell

The Masque of Comus

2021

"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

Rather than re-creating a literal landscape on canvas or paper, I aim to express its essence in a rich and complex form of delicately painted organic subjects that float and trail ac...

Work on canvas

Oil on canvas Francis Moreau is a French artist (1940-2021) who lived and worked in Paris, France. Like many others, he wasn't born with a brush from childhood but through hard wor...