ABSTRACTLY SPEAKING / SIX + ONE: MARIT GERALDINE BOSTAD, STANLEY BOXER, BARBARA HIRSCH, MELISSA MEYER, REBECCA STERN, LIZ TRAN, & JOYCE WEINSTEIN

ABSTRACTLY SPEAKING: SIX + ONE features a multi-generational group of seven artists who are committed to an art practice principally concerned with the interactions between color, line and form, often labeled as abstraction. Staking their own territory within the canon, these artists span several generations, beginning with 20^th c. postwar artists, Stanley Boxer and Joyce Weinstein, followed by baby boomers, Melissa Meyer and Barbara Hirsch, to next-gen emerging artists Liz Tran, Marit Geraldine Bostad and Rebecca Stern.  Cycling through Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Minimalism, to more recent trends, the artists' diverse and distinct works exemplify the vast range of possibilities in communicating via symbols and hues.  They see abstraction as the way to convey complex and disparate concepts and encourage open-ended interaction with viewers whose own imaginations and experiences complete the work. 

Stylistically what binds this group together is their brilliant handling of color.  Utilizing high-key, richly saturated hues, this exhibition offers a visual feast for the eyes exuding optimism and vitality.  Another commonality is the desire to break new ground and invigorate the genre through experimentation with materials, techniques, and form.  

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Born in New York City in 1926, Stanley Boxer stands at the top rank of American Artists.  Although art critic Clement Greenberg categorized Boxer as a color field painter, the artist never considered himself part of any movement or trend.  Prolific during his lifetime, Boxer created paintings, sculpture, works on paper, drawings, watercolors, works in pen and ink, prints and monotypes.  Beginning in the 1960’s and continuing until his death in 2000, the artist enjoyed a successful career and was widely exhibited.  Immersed in the language of Modernism, Boxer’s ‘all over’ abstract impasto oil paintings incorporate found objects, such as concrete, seeds, sawdust, pebbles, string, and glitter, embedded and haphazardly arranged onto the surface of the canvas.  Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times that Boxer’s paintings could be “read as landscapes as well as existing purely in the realm of paint.”   The enigmatic titles were verbal attempts to capture the movement and gestures in his works.

"In the manufacture of my art, I use anything and everything which gets the job done without any sentiment or sanctity as to medium. Then, too, I have deliberately made a practice of being "visionless"... this is, I go where my preceding art takes me, and never try to redirect the future as to what my art should look like. This is a general credo and foundation for everything I have ever done and stands firm in its solidity as this is written."

 

- Stanley Boxer

Married to Stanley Boxer for 49 years, the inseparable yet independent duo met in 1948 as aspiring artists at the Arts Student League in New York City.  Embracing abstract art as a flexible, personal language, the two artists could not be any more distinct.  Joyce Weinstein's paintings are informed by nature and her place of residence in rural Columbia County, New York.  Fabricated in oil, washes, and impasto, the textural works incorporate a visual language of brushed circles and rectangles, paint splatters, squiggles, and gestural sweeps of paint in vibrant colors ranging from fluorescent greens and hot pinks to brooding browns and blacks.  To convey the openness and tranquility of her “country fields”, the artist often leaves parts of the linen canvas exposed and unprimed.  These works represent what Weinstein describes as “another kind of landscape painting, more ‘real’ than literal interpretations."

"I strive for a complicated simplicity. My color, line and form; all are interchangable. None exist without the others. My art is the art of paradox... tense, yet flowing... soft, and strong... romantic, and tough.... formless, and structured.... simple and complex. In other words, a combination of impossibilities." 

 

- Joyce Weinstein

Melissa Meyer’s lyrical painting style is closely influenced by modernism and abstract expressionism.  Compressed into a loose grid-like fashion, Meyers work features calligraphic gestural markings, that seem to spontaneously dance around the canvas.  Employing oil paint thinned to the transparency of watercolor and suffused in colors from bright to pale, the exhibited small-scale diptychs are in a continual play between fluidity and constraint.  In On The Double  the artist’s free form square glyphs are contained in patterned rows which can be read vertically or horizontally, while in Double Take II  the arabesque gestures overlap and intertwine each other, with no focal point for the eye to rest.  Meyer’s paintings reflect the impeccable balance of composition, color, and form that encapsulates Modernist tradition.

“For my work to succeed it should be concerned with reality, but that part of reality that is inexact, uncertain, mysterious, maybe anxious and in a state of becoming.” 

 

- Melissa Meyer

Marit Geraldine Bostad works and lives in Horten, Norway.  Educated as an Art Director and working in the industry for 10 years, Bostad decided to leave her career to pursue painting full time in 2010.  The artist describes her practice "as a kind of therapy and a way for her mind to switch off."  Incorporating broad gestural sweeps of acrylic paint, the canvases are imbued with an explosion of bold, vivid colors that seems to joyfully dance and vibrate.  Beyond the swaths of color, texture also plays a central role.  Her abstract paintings are influenced by memories and people, whose essence she intuitively attempts to preserve on the canvas.

"The most inspiring moments are when the paint itself find new ways, takes interesting and unexpected turns across the canvas. At those moments I need to use my intuition, to either follow or reroute. I don´t listen to music when I work, I use silence as a mentor - to enable me to hear my own voice. I am constantly in a dialogue with my material, it is all about give and take."

 

- Marit Geraldine Bostad

Graduating with honors at Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2009, emerging artist Rebecca Stern considers her abstract compositions as a "mental landscape" that investigates the complexities of the mind.  Intrigued by the interplay of intentionality and expressive freedom of different mediums, Stern employs collages, stitching, and diverse materials in her acrylic paintings to both visually and symbolically convey meaning.  Composed of swaths of gestural brushwork in a subdued palette, Stern often leaves part of the canvas exposed to explore the potential of depth and tension.  For Stern, each painting comes together in parts and each part speaks a different word of the “sentence” she is trying to relay. 

"Manipulating materials in my studio assists me in mitigating the fact that I can’t control what goes on in the day to day. I’m on a journey towards accepting what is. It is this fact that brings me back to the studio again and again."

 

- Rebecca Stern