Clintel Steed "WORKS, 2008-2012"

(Art) Amalgamated

poster for Clintel Steed "WORKS, 2008-2012"

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Clintel Steed’s first show at (Art) Amalgamated is a mini-survey of several distinct bodies of work, created over the past four years. CLINTEL STEED: WORKS, 2008-2012 features the artist’s portraits of friends, relatives, and historical jazz and blues musicians, as well as landscapes.

Harlem-based painter Steed creates thickly layered, brightly colored, paintings built up with a myriad of traditional techniques such as scumbling, washes and impasto. In some works he paints and repaints the canvas, while in others he works briskly - wet-on-wet - and lets the white gessoed underpainting crack throughout the composition. He is primarily a portrait and landscape artist. While it would perhaps be convenient to label him an “expressionist” painter he, in part, rejects the association. Clintel’s paintings are far less concerned with mirroring the psychological conditions that the artist projects onto his surroundings, than with a dynamic way of depiction.

That being said, the speed and intensity of his brushstrokes, the fracturing of forms and objects in his compositions and his bold and unusual use of color certainly reflect an interest in exploring the freneticism of contemporary society.

The image is most important to me. How can I use the oil paint? I want to capture the human eye to transform life experience into something that becomes a painting. How can I create the image that takes all of this energy? How can I show it on canvas? I believe painting has its own time and energy but the source of it comes from living in this ever-changing world. C.S.

Steed’s works draws clear influence from the European modernist canon – particularly the work of his heroes Picasso and Auerbach. What most intrigues Clintel about these artists is their ability to tackle their subjects in an ever-evolving but naturally paced transition of pictorial depictions. Steed has been able to synthesize these influences into his work rather than become overtly reliant them. While the influence is clear, the artist has been able to internalize chosen elements and distill them into wholly original visions in canvas.

Clintel Steed was born in 1977 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He earned his BFA in Painting from The Art institute of Chicago in 1999. In 2001 he received his MFA Indiana University. In 2005, he completed the Advanced Studies program at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. He has had solo exhibitions at Mark Borghi Fine Art, Bridgehampton, NY and Tobey Fine Art, New York City. He has shown at the 181st annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art at the National Academy of Design 2006.

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Schedule

from March 29, 2012 to April 14, 2012

Opening Reception on 2012-03-29 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Clintel Steed

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