Ben Schwab

Crossing Paths

2024

Ben Schwab received a B.F.A. in Painting from Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, and a M.F.A. in Painting from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Ben’s work...

Ben Schwab writes of his work, “the concepts of ‘here’ and “there” have always been interesting to me—particularly the question of what causes us to connect with a space as our ‘here...

Connie Connally’s botanical abstractions reference the wild, sensuous forms and colors she is surrounded by in the natural coastal landscapes of Southe...

Connie Connally’s botanical abstractions reference the wild, sensuous forms and colors she is surrounded by in the natural coastal landscapes of Southern California where she lives a...

Yellow toned abstract painting by Houston, TX artist Marguerite Baldwin. The painting depicts a vibrant garden with flowers set behind a picket fence. Each mosaic "tile" in the paint...

Xanadu 竹外桃源 Chinese artist Gao Xiao Yun is inspired by nature scenes of Suzhou city, China. He illustrates sceneries are filled with an unlimited sense of time and nature light...

In The Mid Of Autumn清秋 Chinese artist Gao Xiao Yun is inspired by nature scenes of Suzhou city, China. He illustrates sceneries are filled with an unlimited sense of time and nature light...

"In the series “This is a real place!” I was fascinated by how the underside of the pier at Saint Simons Island, GA was like a readymade collage. The way the pilings and rails divide and frame the spaces between them looks artificially imposed on the scene until you notice the way the waves bounce off the pilings and the railings cast shadows on the water. In some iterations, I chose to simplify the structures of the pier and lighten the values so that it would emphasize the detail in the water. Likewise, I omitted a family of starlings and their droppings in favor of highlighting the geometry of the architecture and the colors and patterns of the water. Making paintings in a series allows me to investigate the results of making different decisions about an image. How I crop or stylize it, the manner in which I apply the paint, what gets included or excluded all add shades of meaning to each piece. Additionally, depictions of the same subject in different weather, seasons, times of day, and tides allows me a deeper understanding. I notice more relationships, colors, and details every time I paint the subject. Every painting is a pile of decisions. Playing with removing more and more details to see what is truly important sometimes improves the painting. The fewer elements you include in an image, the more each one means, and the more important it is to get each thing perfect. At times I like to paint every single detail I can find in a scene, and other times I feel like the unadorned components are sufficient to hold each other in a satisfying composition. I often add simplified shapes to my paintings to highlight the presence of absence or to heighten the importance of each area by creating stark visual contrasts. ⁠The physicality of the paint also plays a role. I used highly textured, thickly applied paint to construct the solid structural elements, and luminous layers of thinly glazed paint for the delicate linework and subtle blending of the water." - Brooke Lanier...