Tuesday, August 21, 2007

New American Paintings # 71

I mentioned a while back that I was going to be in an upcoming
edition of the New American Paintings. Well it's about to hit bookstores
everywhere (Barnes & Noble, Borders, most bookstores), this Friday,
August 24th, to be exact...

It will be in the magazine section..

and it should look like this...








An excerpt from the Juror who selected the artists, Elizabeth Dunbar, of Arthouse at the Jones Center in Austin TX and former Curator of the Kansas City Art museum:

...However, there is no denying that the
Midwest’s stretching landscape, expansive natural environment, and deep
agricultural roots have had an impact on many of its resident
artists—from centuries past to the present day; from George CalebBingham
and Thomas Hart Benton to several of the artists included here. The
landscape—whether directly inspired by the Midwest, based on other
locations, or conjured purely from the artists’ fertile imaginations—is
a predominant theme in much of the work in this publication. However,
most of the included landscapes are not bountiful fields or bucolic
vistas; rather, they are often stark or terrifying lands teeming with
an impending sense of doom or destruction. For example, paintings by
Amy Casey, GregoryEuclide, and Adam Benjamin Fung , while stylistically
diverse, all portray worlds—Midwestern and beyond—that have succumbed
to or are hovering on the brink of disaster. Together these artists and
others evoke a common concern with the ruinous effects of environmental
destruction, global warming, and natural disaster, timely topics with
worldwide repercussions, but which have had startling impact on the
Midwestern region recently, as several areas have been decimated by
drought, flooding, tornadoes, and other catastrophic
events.