Monday, November 10, 2008

Holy FLIP!


I found a painting at SAAM that was a shock. It is by Joan Brown, bay area figurative painter a-la Elmer Bischoff/David Park, but in truth she blows the neighboring Bischoff off the wall. My opinion, but it is a really muscular painting, if I may. PLUS this painting has all the things I like in paintings: Slathered on nudes, slathered on dogs, and especially slathered on clouds! A painting triple threat.

I also like how a kind of unhinged-I would say "painter's logic"- puts all of these subjects together in a painting:
"Okay so I've trowelled on my figure here at the bottom...and this up here, this here looks a little like a dog. I'll go ahead and paint a dog. I need something in the upper left now and I have a mound of pink and a grey/yellow...what could it be? Oh! A cloud! How PERFECT!"

2 comments:

sjw said...

Do you know the date of the Joan Brown painting? It reminds me of an Albert York or two--a technicolor version. And do you know the work of Roland Peterson, another Bay area artist (at least I think so)? I emailed you the announcement to a current show of his work at Hackett-Freedman.

MATTHEW said...

The painting titled Nude, Dog, Clouds is from 1963.

Thanks for the Roland Peterson images. How did those Bay area painters afford all of that paint?! Yeesh, they just troweled it on!