"Transfigured," 2008, oil and iridescence on linen, 28"x48"
The recent work has often required a full measure of patience along with a willingness to allow radical change. Begun in 2004, by early 2008 this was a dark canvas that had seen three different studios. Maybe clear fall sun streaming through the skylights inspired a different potential. After nearly four years, it took just days to cover most of the darkest marks in the painting with a thin layer of the best iridescent blue.
“Transfigured” is the image featured on the announcement for the April 6- May 21st solo show “Crossing” at Union Theological Seminary.
The studio doors will be open Saturday and Sunday, September 27 and 28, from noon to 7 PM as part of the 2008 Art Under the Bridge Festival.
The annual event is put together by the Dumbo Arts Center and draws as many as 150,000 visitors to this unique neighborhood. The festival includes a wide variety of public performance and temporary art installations, as well as roughly 100 open studios. Details are on the DAC festival website and there is some additional information at media sponsor current’s website.
The studio is located at 89 Bridge Street, just one block east of the York stop on the F train. Come up to the second floor and follow the signs. Here’s a map:
“The Valley Floor,” 2008, raw pigment, pastel, gold leaf and iridescence on handmade paper, 6.5” x 9”
Dieu Donne is showing work created for their annual benefit auction at their Chelsea gallery. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, September 18, and the show will run until the auction on October 14. Complete details on the Dieu Donne website.
This drawing, made on some of Dieu Donne’s own lovely handmade paper, will be there:
“Valley Floor” was made while sitting on a deck of a beach house on Fire Island. Cedar, the 4 year old in charge of the place, was watching very carefully. Then she sat down and made her own:
“Untitled,” 2008, by Cedar, colored pencil and marker on paper, 8.5”x11”
"Coriolis," 2008, oil and gold leaf on panel, 13"x32.5"
In chapter four, Elements, of his book Wind, Sand, and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry tells the story of his encounter with a blue storm: a violent, cloudless wind storm. He describes the color of the sky viscerally:
On this particular day I did not like the color of the sky. It was blue. Pure blue.
A hard blue sky that shone over the scraped and barren world while the fleshless vertebrae of the mountain chain flashed in the sunlight. Not a cloud. The blue sky glittered like a new-honed knife.
It’s a fantastic piece of writing that goes on to describe an exhausting battle for life in a what most would probably call a beautiful patch of sky off of the Patagonian coast. Although few of us ever experience anything like what Saint-Exupéry describes, there is something well past human scale in the cloudless blue of a perfect day. Most of us would readily identify an accompanying spiritual state. The distance between that sort of blue sky joy and Saint-Exupéry’s blue sky terror has been a repeat fascination for me. “Coriolus,” the painting you see here, is one of the results.
“Coriolus” was shown at the 2008, AAF in New York by Migration Gallery. It is part of a private collection.
This painting was finished in early March, 2008. The changes in the week or two right before that point were pretty dramatic. It had been a dark painting for months. The inspiration right at the end came from a very beat up street tree that I walk by every morning between the house and the subway. Then just piles of white paint and the lights came on.
Barbara Rose has curated a show called “The Magic Hour” at the Paul Rodgers/9W Gallery in New York:
Rose has chosen four artists; painters, Paul Manes and Randall Stoltzfus and photographers, Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Ernest Kafka with widely divergent styles but a similar interest in the elegiac mood of The Magic Hour. These artists reference the moody paintings of artists such as Ryder, Blakelock, the Luminists and the Hudson River School as well as Kasper David Friedrich and JMW Turner. Their light saturated abstracted landscapes and marinescapes are executed in a contemporary idiom that is a fresh departure from the brutal urban, sensationalistic styles now current. They provide an atmosphere of quiet contemplation and reverie. The sensitive poetry of these works serves as a welcome antidote to the frantic paced, characteristic of the aggressive battles of New York City life.
read the press release
Randall Stoltzfus has been invited to represent the United States at the 2007 Sosabeol International Art Expo in Pyongtaek, South Korea. The Expo will run from October 11, 2007 – October 19, 2007, and will feature the work of 100 artists from around the world in addition to 60 artists from Korea. Participating countries include: China, France, Holland, India, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, the United States of America, Thailand, and Vietnam
read the press release
"The Maiden," 2004, oil on panel, 10"x8"
“The Maiden” is a small panel that was begun during a residency at the Millay Colony in 1999 and finished five years later at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2004. Part of the original inspiration came from a series of polaroids made a year or so earlier.
"Fred's Ghost" 1998, Polaroid Photograph, 3.25"x4.25"
"St. John" 1998, Polaroid Photograph, 3.25"x4.25"
"Second State," 2002, oil on linen, 72"x84"
Measuring six by eight feet, this canvas was one of the two larger pieces in progress in the studio in September of 2001. It was begun sometime in late 2000 and finished in 2002, only to be reworked on the eve of the first solo show with the Durst organization in October 2003.
October 2003 show announcement showing previous state, titled "Housefire"
As a result of the reworking, the announcement for the October show bore an image of the painting in the earlier incarnation. When the show was extended and moved to a new location by the Durst’s curator, L.L. Powers, a new card updated the appearance of the painting, now titled “Second State.”
"The Garden Gate," 1999, oil on canvas, diptych, 96"x120"
“The Garden Gate” was painted over several months in 1999. A large painting, at eight by ten feet, it was first hung in the lobby of the Sumitomo Corporation of America building at 600 3rd Avenue in New York. It was subsequently shown by the Durst Organization, where it hung on the massive west wall of the Condé Nast building lobby at 4 Times Square.
"Garden Gate" hanging in the lobby of the Condé Nast building, October 2003.Photo by Uwe Neumann
