Joan Mellon and Lester Rapaport “Recent Paintings”

Carter Burden Gallery

poster for Joan Mellon and Lester Rapaport “Recent Paintings”

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Joan Mellon is showing recent abstract paintings, and she describes how painting for her “is pleasure – the smell of the paint, the richness of its color, the physical act of making a painting.” Mellon’s works are driven by process, beginning with choosing a surface, size, and orientation, and then making random strokes. Each mark suggests the next, until after perhaps hundreds of applications and wiping off the paint, the surface comes alive. The numerous layers of paint build a rich and complex final surface.

Joan Mellon is originally from New York City, where she continues to live and make work. She received her B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts and M.A. in liberal studies from SUNY Empire State College. Mellon has exhibited her work in New York City, nationally and internationally. Mellon’s award-winning work is in a number of private and public collections including Johnson & Johnson, the Franklin Furnace Archives at the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Library Print Collection. She has been an adjunct mentor at SUNY Empire State College, NYC. Website: joanmellon.com

Lester Rapaport will show three of his large, 54” x 84”, abstract paintings for his first exhibition at the Carter Burden Gallery. These paintings come from a series that he began after the sudden death of a parent. In this series, Rapaport developed his visual vocabulary to grieve, with the colors reflecting the somber mood and the dripped shape and disc representing other-worldly spirit and consciousness. As the colors and title of his piece Hopefully suggest, Rapaport has moved on emotionally, while the visual vocabulary has taken on a life of its own.

Lester Rapaport is originally from Brooklyn. He attended Hunter College for both his B.F.A. and graduate school where he studied with Tony Smith, Ralph Humphrey, Doug Ohlsen, and Ray Parker. Rapaport received the William Graff Scholarship for graduate study. He lived in Toronto, Ontario where he worked with the David Mirvish Gallery and Deakin Fine Arts. Rapaport returned to Brooklyn in the mid-1970s, and continues to live and work in Williamsburg. His reading on quantum physics, relativity theory, astro-physics, and science fiction influenced his painting in the 1970s and 1980s. His meditation practice is reflected in his work since 1991. Rapaport has shown extensively in Brooklyn and New York City for over thirty years. Website: lesterrapaport.com

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Schedule

from January 15, 2015 to February 05, 2015

Opening Reception on 2015-01-15 from 18:00 to 20:00

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