Beginning in the diverse field of Roy Lichtenstein, Philip Guston, Alex Katz, Roger Brown, Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, the influence of comic strips on figurative artists became easy to track. Abstraction is different. Elizabeth Murray pioneered, but few followed.
They’re following now. These artists favor curved over straight lines, rebounds over splats. They seek the painterly sweet spot, a place where the ball bounces without bothering to articulate a ball. They infuse into their colored grounds the comic spirit of up and at ’em.
Karin Davie (her Web site here)
Davie is so crucial I’m going to reproduce her twice. If her paintings were particle physicists, they’d pop gum at the podium.
Claude Zervas – comic abstraction imitating a flower.
Darren Waterston – sci-fi spiritualism meets Chinese landscape painting merged with George Herriman to beget gorgeous goo.
Susan Dory: Comparing her to mid-20th century Color Field figure such as Morris Louis is useful. His transparent, overlapping mounds of color are art in art about art. Hers, less transparent, have roots in thought bubbles, Internet tubes and tunnels made by moles planning to surface in Elmer Fudd’s garden.
Omar Chacon – It’s raining in Toon Town
More Chacon, detail:
Mary Heilmann – life in a comic strip highrise
Harold Hollingsworth – When comic weather takes a dark turn, forked tongues serve as rain.
Aaron Bagley – up, up and away
Nice company to be placed with here Regina, thank you!