NYAB Event - Stepanie Franks "Locked into Place by Line, Form and Color"

Stepanie Franks "Locked into Place by Line, Form and Color"

Bowery Gallery

This event has ended.

Each painting of Stephanie Franks might be compared to a journey, a voyage of discovery. The journey begins as paint is applied. Ahead lies a maze of infinite possibilities. Marks are made, points of reference established , observation fuels the direction: a selected view of the studio, a set up, a still life, objects that serve to anchor the eye while surrounding structures establish the space. The magic of painting is underway. At some point a second stage of activity joins the flow, a kind of breaking down of much that has been done thus far; a type of distillation to seek what is essential in all that has been conjured up through the lines, marks, planes, colors, luminosity, transparency, through the stuff of painting.

A sense of tension permeates the whisper of atmospheric space which is locked into place by line, form and color. Painted forms and linear elements define place and also speak of the struggle engaged in during their execution. The use of color whether muted or fully saturated generates luminous harmonies, a visual equivalent to operatic duets.

The same can be said of Franks's drawings apart from the fact that rather than being composed of colorful hues, they are a feast of contrasting blacks and whites with degrees of gray; and yet they seem suffused with a sense of color. Their imagery evolves through a process of putting down and then carving away combined with acts of replacement. Things emerge and dissolve into their surroundings, questioning form and the very nature of existence.