bird notes

8:30am 12:45pm 11/16/90, 1990, ink on paper, 22 1/2 x 22 1/4 in

Billy Sullivan: Bird Drawings

Glenn Horowitz Bookseller

Since the early 1990s, artist Billy Sullivan has been drawing the birds that frequent his East Hampton backyard. Currently on view at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, also in East Hampton, are selected drawings from over three decades of Sullivan's nuanced line, keen observation and his quick and fluent hand. 

detail: 6/22/99, 6:16am 7:09am, 1999, ink on paper, 30 x 22 in

 

I focus on the birds, their activities, movements and rhythms. Watching 

them, you can see that dominance doesn't matter.

B.S. 

Sullivan's mellifluous lines and inky swashes of brush reveal more than the empirical -- they are meditations on being and birdness, flight and stasis and persona, disposition and anima. 

His imagery moves across the page quickly, multiplying with all the briskness of flocks of birds in flight. The drawings are fleeting and minimal, and yet their conveyance of the nature of all things bird is really quite astonishing.

8/6/97 11:45am 12:25pm, 1997, ink on Arches paper, 30 x 22 in

Gallery director Jess Frost sat down with me last week to share some thoughts on the exhibit, which features works dating from 1990 to three drawings completed the weekend before the show opened. 

"The way the birds move around the page, they're almost musical," said Frost. Indeed, Sullivan's methodology requires him to apprehend the birds almost instantaneously.

You want the marks to be as fast as the birds.

B.S.

4/6/03 2:15pm 2:40pm, 2003, Ink on paper, 30 x 22 in

"Some of them are like field drawings," Frost continued, "they're all done from life. Billy sits at his dining room table in front of a picture window. All the works are titled by date and time, so you can tell that certain birds arrive seasonally."

I'm excited every spring when I hear orioles before I can see them. I love seeing hummingbirds arrive in the spring, but I miss hearing 

bobwhites -- they're just not around anymore. 

B.S.

detail: 11/4/12 8:35am-9:44am 10:58am-11:57am 12:03am-1:20pm , 2012, ink on paper, 26 x 120 in

This body of work, you might say, is in direct opposition to Sullivan's acclaimed figurative paintings, which are drawn from his own photography and photographic archives. The paintings are diaristic, crisp and sexy, transforming the humble snapshot into poetic characterizations that depict the life and times of Sullivan, his famed cadre and the people and things in his orbit.
  
In his photography, a renown body of work in its own right, Sullivan has chronicled some 45 years of art world shenanigans that he experienced firsthand, beginning with those halcyon days at Max's Kansas City beginning in the late 1960s. Lauded for the incisive photographic installation he mounted in Day for Night: The 2006 Whitney Biennial, Sullivan's body of photographic works bounce from sun drenched beach parties to matter-of-fact nudes and the clubs, cocktails and camp of the 1970s and 80s.

Like the bird drawings, the imagery contained within his portraits and still lifes reveals as much about the artist as it does his subjects.

 

The birds dictate who's in the drawing. Birds have schedules. A cardinal 

always comes at meal times.

B.S.

 

IX 2/9/93 1:55 2:08pm, 1993, Ink on paper, 10 x 14 in

Mourning doves have returned this year, they had been absent for 

a while. Now there are turkeys around and downy woodpeckers

at the feeder and also pecking on the side of my house.

B.S.

Sullivan's hand is smart and honest, without a touch of cynicism. An inventive and buoyant colorist, the bird drawings -- devoid of color -- reveal that gentle bullfighter within the artist.



 

Accompanying the exhibition a limited edition book, BIRDS, with text by author, birder and conservationist, the famed Margaret Atwood and Sullivan's drawings.

 

BIRDS is available for purchase through Glenn Horowitz Bookseller

On the evolution of both the exhibit and the book, Frost recalled her delight when the famed author agreed to include her 2010 essay on bird conservation, originally published in The Guardian, in the book. 

Billy Sullivan: Bird Drawings is on view through January 1, 2013.

ex nihilo: red black and white

detail: NSIBTW-22,2012, oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Eric Dever

s.Ram

RED WHITE AND BLACK PAINTINGS

at Sara Nightingale 

After a lengthy exile from the maddening seductions of color, the artist Eric Dever spent the past year rediscovering the color red. Not just any red, but the very particular iteration Napthol Scarlet, and the uncountable derivations possible in it when combined with white (Titanium) and black (Ivory). The results, a suite of pulsing, contemplative, hypnotic paintings by Dever are on view at Sara Nightingale Gallery through November 21. This is an electrifying show that you won't want to miss.

 

installation: S. Ram RED WHITE AND BLACK PAINTINGS, 2012

Elemental and exacting, Dever's paintings make you feel like he invented color. Crisp blacks fold into gray and white, and reds yield to coral, salmon and fleshy pinks that seem to have risen from coal fields. Brilliant blushes radiate out of expanses of burlap, linen or cotton canvas with geometric precision. His palette, modulated variations in red, black and white, reveals incredible diversity, and his arsenal of structural idioms -- chiefly circles, right angles and bars of color -- expand outward as if in a constant state of reinvention. 

We sat down at the gallery recently to share some thoughts on color theory, red wine, yoga and a dash of French semiotics, courtesy Roland Barthes:

     "Last year I exhibited a suite of grayscale paintings in Paris, finalizing five years of work with black and white paint exclusively."

    

NSIBTW-9, 2012, oil on burlap, 26 x 36 inch

After the Paris show, Dever traveled to Languedoc in the south of France, the place of his ancestry. The area, known for its savage past, was an outpost of the Cathars, a resolute religious sect that dared to defy the Catholic church to their own considerable peril. 

The medieval bloodshed that haunts the region brought Roland Barthes' famed Wine and Milk essay to Dever's mind, and a body of new work was born. 

Alchemy, transmutation, wine and blood -- an "aha" moment for the artist. Barthes' commentary on the heredity of the color red and its permutations, both cultural and ideological, provided a powerful gateway for Dever.

"It was time to introduce a color into my practice."

detail

 

Dever works methodically, applying paint with a spackle knife. Modulating the range of color gradually, he moves in or out of the canvas employing a motif that's clean and straightforward. Concentric circles, rectangles, parallel lines -- each painting is self-possessed, without a trace of the mechanical.

NSTW-9, 2012, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

"I'm interested in the performance of color. I'd like to understand what the range is there, so I want take it as far as possible."

After exhaustive studio research, Dever selected Napthol Scarlet as his color of choice. Of all the red family, this one is closest to the color Vermilion, a 9th century alchemical mixture of sulfer and mercury. While it might have been an attempt to produce the philosopher's stone, it was surely a bright, opaque red that was used by painters for centuries.

"Napthol Scarlet provided the broadest range of tints, shades and tones -- but I was really surprised by the deep purples, gray lavender hues and ethereal pinks."

  

NSTW-6, 2012, oil on burlap, 36 x 36 inches

In an effort to disrupt the circle he began to leave portions of it blank, and it opened a compositional doorway that has allowed the artist to move through his paintings with greater confidence.

Of his antecedents -- artists employing a limited palette -- 

the list is long. Dever might best be allied to Agnes Martin, 

Robert Ryman, early Brice Marden and, to some extent, Giorgio Morandi. His work is all his own, but like Martin, the content of his art reflects an abiding interest in Eastern mysticism.

 

A yoga devotee, Dever's art runs parallel to his yogic practice which includes the study of Sanskrit and chant. His examinations of color and form dovetail pretty seamlessly into the artist's apprehension of material nature as described in Samkyha philosophy. 

"When I paint, I have a sense of mixing the three gunas (energies): tamas, (or black, darkness, matter); satva, (or white, light and the ether sphere); and rajas, (red, the energy that binds these qualities and all of existence).

 

NSIBTW-17, 2012, oil on burlap, 36 x 36 inches

Like breaking a long fast, the sudden apprehension of color was exhilarating for Dever. 

"I've never enjoyed painting anything so much. It's been over a year now, and I still feel that way. Moving out of the grayscale -- the possibilities are exponentially larger and more complex."  

Monastic at one end and exuberant at the other, embedded in Dever's visual language is a portrait of that glorious optic brain. The rudiments of vision -- here, a sort of subculture all its own -- offer a full spectrum of pictorial restraint, painterly finesse and deep breathing.

 

 

NSIBTW-10, 2012, oil on burlap, 36 x 36 inches

Hmmm...black and white...   

"For Picasso, black and white are colors, and so are the 

thousands of shades of gray in between."

Jerry Saltz, Picasso's Monochrome Paintings Display a Rainbow of Emotion

 New York Magazine, November 5, 2012 

 

portrait of the artist

fragrance

   engender, 2012, watercolor, mulberry paper, epoxy, 36 x 36"

M I K E   S O L O M O N

Returning to the Mark

Salomon Contemporary

 

"Art does not have to address beauty -- to reach for beauty. But it sure is great if it does."

Peter Schjeldahl, 2005, in conversation with Neal Benazra, director SFMOMA, Wattis Theater 

Mike Solomon's new paintings hover between subject and object with an irresistible, melt-in-your-mouth translucence. Their fleeting visuals -- soft, commingling bars of color that float in deep space -- seem to colonize in an effort to elude definition, but they flirt at the edges of actual moments, coalescing and pulling apart within small poetries of memory, awareness and redolence. Something akin to what the mystics call "fragrance."

Now on view at Salomon Contemporary, selected paintings and sculpture from three distinct bodies of work, each an examination of fluid grids, wave patterns, hyperbolic planes and a sort of painter's mindfulness, in this, the artist's first solo show in New York City.

memoria de Seville, 2012, watercolor, mulberry paper, epoxy, 36 x 36"

Sitting across from these paintings in his East Hampton studio last week, Solomon shared some thoughts about process, optics, Impressionism and painting.

"When I was working out memoria de Seville, I just kept thinking to myself -- this color is so familiar -- what is it? And then it hit me -- it was Seville, where I visited once in the 70s. It was just so familiar."

The redolence conjured in these paintings exists on a number of other levels, too. They ricochet between reminiscences of Bradley Walker Tomlin, Paul Klee, minimalism and various Cubist idioms and then bounce to the more specific -- like layers of hard candy, koi ponds or coconut jello. Solomon's interests are wide ranging, but with this body of work he dives into the tenets of early Impressionism -- "the beginning of everything," he said -- as the optic brain helped launch the modernist era. 

Like most studio processes, Solomon's is relatively unglamorous. With watercolor, he paints modest shapes across mulberry paper and then layers resin on each sheet, addressing the pages one by one. There are a lot of basics -- sanding, peeling, adjusting -- along the way, but as the paper and resin accumulate into thickness, a sort of hallucinatory grid begins to emerge. 

"In some ways I'm working blind," said the artist, "from front to back. The process is about aggregating things --my response is intuitive -- I don't ever know 
exactly how it will end."

For the artist, who is working in the reverse throughout this process, the results are often a complete surprise. Color and form gradually pool into luminous, milky squares. The elements unify into a solid -- like melted sugar -- and the paintings look almost edible, as if one could lick the content from their surface. The resulting imagery is magically diffuse.

detail

Solomon has talked about this often -- the way things coalesce -- and the events that shape the outcome. These things are at the core of his work. Of his fascination with water, he has spoken about the "fact" of waves as a place where something happens in the x and y grid -- an event, if you will. To this end, his focus has been undeterred throughout some thirty years of art making. Driven by action rather than reverie, Solomon's work is often referential but non-specific, like breath on the back of the neck.

"The past is an aggregate of the present -- it's still 
there -- to me, it's a more accurate model of reality."

The Bombora, 1979, (Isla Vista, March 3, 12:00), watercolor on paper, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2"

In a series of early watercolors the artist captured reefs, water flow and wave action in small works that examine the subtle coloration and movement of the ocean -- a big subject. The Bombora, 1979, is titled for a surfing term (a term coined in Australia, now used worldwide) that describes large waves breaking over a shallow area in the sea. 

Petalon, 2008-10, nylon net, epoxy, fiberglass, tints, 33 x 44 x 14"

 
The confluence of events that generally makes this a dangerous wave also makes it a Bombora, which is an attractive "event" for surfers. Such an event is what Solomon refers to as that "x and y place" in the grid. It's a cool and precise way of describing the indescribable. He locates that activity -- something he knows well after years of surfing and fishing -- in sculptural works in which fluid planes are torqued into form, their content as ephemeral, yet specific, as his paintings.

through the garden, through the gate, 2012, watercolor, mulberry paper, epoxy, 36 x 36"

"It's sort of like reducing memory to a molecular 
level -- you see previous things, pentimentos of things."

And so, contained in Solomon's grid work are the moments, memories and the small poetries that function at the edges of actuality. That subtle piercing into the fabric of memory is one of the mainstays of his oeuvre.

detail, Bolster, 2008

His blog, All the Work I've Ever Done, is crazy in that way. It's literally a blow by blow account of Solomon's considerable experience in the art world, from both coasts to Florida and beyond.

Panta rhei, 2008

"Art, you know, it's messy. As much as that is abstract, it's hard to get away from the fact of memory."

To be clear, Solomon is not waxing nostalgic, he's speaking more of the physiological properties of memory -- the mnemonic and cognition, optics, neuroscience and the visual brain -- as if moments in time could be spliced paper-thin.





 
 On view at Salomon Contemporary 
though November 17 -- don't miss 
this glimpse at a rare hybrid of 
structure, memory 
and fragrance.

world within a world

Unknown Control Over Country's Horse Power, 2010, hand ground mineral pigments w/gum arabic, 8 x 6"

Raja Ram Sharma
Contemporary Paintings from Rajasthan

at The Drawing Room 

One of the best things about the age we live in is its cross culturalism. In the arts, the world is wider -- more egalitarian -- and infinitely more interesting than it was 20 years ago. Fingertip communication has changed everything, with smartphones and the internet helping to level the playing field across the globe. We stand more shoulder to shoulder now, and our perception of contemporary art is that much more broad, allowing cultural exchange that inspires a new sort of camaraderie, appreciation and awe. 

Enter Raja Ram Sharma, master temple painter and contemporary artist whose intimate, sacred, fantastical works are currently on view at The Drawing Room in East Hampton. Whether you're a painter, collector, art world devotee or simple phenomenologist, you must see this exhibition. Bring your readers, because the level of intrigue in these small works requires observation skills of the keenest order.

Independent, 2011, hand ground mineral pigments with gum arabic, 6 x 8 1/8"

Raja Ram Sharma lives in Udaipur, Rajasthan in northwest India, a sumptuous lake city filled with 16th century temple complexes, palaces and elaborate gardens. Sharma's aptitude for drawing was exhibited so early that by age 7 he was sent to live with a renowned Indian painter. There he studied the traditions of the Nathdwara school, and learned to paint pichwai, the cloth paintings that hang behind Krisha in Hindu temples across Asia. Now a master temple painter, Sharma presides over a pichwai workshop where apprentices work to his specifications. 

Before the Storm, 2012, hand ground mineral pigments with gum arabic, 6 1/8 x 8 5/8"

In his free time, Sharma paints in the tradition of the Indian miniature typical of works developed in the Mughal empire. He applies mineral pigments to recycled paper, transforming each stroke as if it were a precious jewel. The marvelous detail is owed both to a lifetime of study as well as the single-hair brushes he makes from squirrel hair. (Single-hair is a bit of a misnomer -- it's not literally a single hair -- it's a tuft of hair from the tail of a squirrel that is shaped to allow a single hair to ascend to the tip). The bounce and flexibility of each brush is key to its use. The detail below measures less than one square inch of the painting above. 

detail: Before the Storm

Sharma's representative, Navneet Raman, curator and owner of Kriti Gallery in Benares, was kind enough to share some insights on the contemporary miniature with me last week.

The origins of the Persian miniature date back to 16th century. Typical of these paintings then, and not so different now, were the depictions of court life, historic battles, hunting scenes, landscape and wildlife. Today the art itself, while popular, is considered by the cultural elite as a part of the craft tradition, existing outside of the fine arts. It's not uncommon for contemporary artists in India eschew this magical tradition in spite of its delicate beauty. In fact, the ubiquitous miniatures found in local bazaars and tourist venues are often copies painted by teams of artisans, frequently falsely aged to have the appearance of antiquity. And throughout history -- even at the highest levels -- the subject matter in these particular paintings has been determined by patronage, not by individual expression. In this regard Sharma's new work, driven solely by his own artistic vision, is something of a revolution.

Flight to Freedom, 2011, hand ground mineral pigments w/gum arabic, 12 1/4 x 7 3/8"

For Raja Ram Sharma, a commitment to practice, a large following, and a new found independence has armed him with the will to exercise his voice well beyond the existing conventions. 

When Victoria Munroe (co-owner of The Drawing Room, with Emily Goldstein) met the artist in 2003, he was at the cusp of artistic liberation. She wanted to exhibit his work and offered him an extraordinary creative outlet by saying, "paint what you want." A revelation for any artist -- to be sure -- but in this case, unprecedented.

Study I, 2001, hand ground mineral pigments with gum arabic, 6 x 8 1/8"

Raja Ram Sharma's first exhibition at the former Victoria Munroe Fine Arts in Boston garnered reviews in Art in America, Arts of Asia and The New York Times. Two of Sharma's paintings now hang between 16th and 17th century miniatures at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. 

There have been moments of dazzling balance between the representational and the abstract -- for example, Byzantine mosaics; pre-Columbian and American Indian textiles and ceramics; Japanese screens; Mughal painting; and post-Impressionism.

Roberta Smith, New York Times, March 28, 2010 

"Until it's on exhibit," said Navneet, "no one sees this work other than Raja and his wife. In fact, this work has not been shown in India -- it's the first time I've even seen it framed."

Navneet Raman, owner and curator of Kriti Gallery

"These exhibitions -- in Boston and here -- they have allowed him to buy a house for his family, and it's big enough for him to work," said Navneet. "But more than that, it's the acceptance he feels. That is tremendous."

"When we exhibited his paintings in 2005
(in India), it was the first time miniature paintings were shown in a stand-alone exhibition outside a museum. Every piece sold on opening night. He has many followers now. In October he will exhibit at Kriti (in Benares) -- we anticipate a successful event."

The Udaipur region suffers tremendous annual droughts that are followed by drenching monsoons, and in this way the region bounces from the inhospitable to the luscious, and then back again. Its undulating landscape provides little agricultural terrain and the area is constantly imperiled by a diminishing underground water table. Sharma locates this vulnerability in the sun-burnt hillsides and empty palace grounds of his paintings, everywhere devoid of humans. And then, it is transformed into a verdant Shangri-La, cycling just as it might in the natural world.

photo Cary Wolinsky, National Geographic

Mineral pigments are just what they sound like -- actual nuggets of agate, pearl, lapus lazuli, gold and the like, that are pulverized into powder, using gum arabic as a binder, much like egg is to tempera. 

Sharma's wife hand grinds pigment for 10 to 12 days straight -- yes, every day for a week and a half -- using a mortar and pestle. Each mineral exhibits singular qualities that require varied applications, assorted brushes and specific treatments. A lifetime of preparation stands at the foreground of the use of these pigments.

And, in case you're wondering, in Udaipur and other parts of India you don't get your studio materials at 1-800-mineralpigments. Sources for the best pigments are tricky to locate and complicated to maintain, requiring assiduous research and frequent updates. 

"The average person, if they got a bag of mineral pigments," said Navneet, "they would have absolutely no idea what to make of them."

So, after forty some years of painting what other people dictate, what's an artist to do?

Freedom on the Move, 2011, hand ground mineral pigments with gum arabic, 7 3/8 x 12 1/2"

Sharma's recent works depict a world in which humanity is represented only by its architecture, its articulated landscapes and the wildlife by which it is surrounded. Boats drift without passengers, horses without riders and empty windows, loggias and bridges abound. It is the artist's personal testament to humankind's lurking dissociation to the natural world. In this regard, Sharma's paintings possess a sense of longing, stillness and solitude and a reverence for the depth of this rich cultural landscape.

The Signs of Change with the Advent of the Monsoon, 2010

Raja Ram Sharma, Contemporary Paintings from Rajasthan is on view through October 29. Don't miss this wonderful show.



 

Another interesting note: currently on view at the Museum of Art and Design, selections from the extraordinary collection of Doris Duke's Shangri-La in Hawaii are on view in the exhibit Doris Duke's Shangri-La: Architecture, Landscape and Islamic Art.  

This marks the first time any of the foundation's 3,500 works of art have been exhibited off site, and includes works by six contemporary artists who were recently in residence there. The Gods must be speaking...