NYAB Event - Helen Miranda Wilson "Eight Paintings"

This event has ended.
At Lori Bookstein Fine Art
Media: Painting

The eight non-representational paintings that make up this show were done over the last three years. They represent an obvious progression from Helen Miranda Wilson's previous series, but are considerably more detailed, each panel being covered by a myriad of rectangles which blanket the surface in an unbroken array. Their plurality is reminiscent of the multiplicity which meets the eye whenever we are in nature, surrounded by its uncountable repetitions. Many years of painting landscape from life, as well as the artist's early exposure to the art of the Bauhaus movement have greatly influenced this most recent work. The profusion of color can also bring to mind the mosaic murals that the artist first saw in Ravenna, in the 1970s, which are made of millions of tiny, shimmering glass tiles.

The paint is applied meditatively, not gesturally or obsessively. Mistakes, when they occur, are allowed and left to be seen. No two colors are alike, and each one is chosen in a casual, unconscious way. Each one represents a journal of many hours, marked in a method that slowed time for the artist as she worked to cover the surface, painting it from top to bottom, one color after another.

Although Wilson no longer uses recognizable subject matter as she did for most if her career, these paintings are done with the same materials and techniques and in the same small format for which she has always been known. The surfaces are matte and yet have a velvety, open quality because the artist uses oil paint with no added medium and applies no final overcoat of varnish. The edges of the unframed panels retain the drips of primer, sanded smooth which are meant to be seen as part of the object. Wilson typically works wet-into-wet, blending the paint softly into itself with fan brushes. She has used this technique to blur the lines between one section of a painting and the next, since the early 1970s.

The artist has lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, the town she grew up in, for the last ten years. She keeps honeybees and chickens successfully and serves as a member of the local government. She paints full-time and teaches occasionally.

[Image: Helen Miranda Wilson "Snow in Summer" (2009) Oil paint on panel 12 x 12 in.]

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