Experimental abstractions are forceful, seductive
CHICKASHA — The “experimental abstractions” of Don Holladay may be “informed by … printmaking,” but they also are powerfully painterly.
The Norman artist’s “Prairie Moderns” show is at the Nesbitt Gallery at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha.
One work reflecting his printmaking background forcefully is a monotype of a white silhouetted figure at a dark “Border Crossing.”
Subjects of two other mostly white on black monotypes are a “Dangerous Summer” tornado and a breaking tropical storm wave as it “Hits Land.”
Combining collage with monotype well are prints of a dark figure doing a “Sun Dance” and of an Africanlooking mask, emblematic of “far places.”
Oil or ink on paper works portray “The Sentry,” armed with a spear, and a woman whose “Paleface” contrasts with her black clothes and a red-brown background.
Very visually seductive
are such “allover” housepaint canvases as “Pollock Road” in red, blue, black and white drips, and the even more intense, “Dancing on Glass.”
Burlap helps us imagine a tan and off-white landscape, a little reminiscent of Paul Klee, in “Fargo,” while loose brushwork suggests an “African Waterfalls,” in an oil on paper.
But it is in such paintings as “Cascade,” “New Year’s Day,” “Bleak Winter Thicket” and “Fracture” that Holladay makes perhaps his strongest visual statements.
Broad, broken planes of black, brown, red and white, linked by strategic drips and drops of house paint, seem to “Cascade” into our laps in the former, for example.
A rich, red, almost funnel or siphon shape appears to “Fracture” the surface, dividing flat, reddishbrown planes above black, mountain-like ridges, in his work of that title.
Much lighter is “New Year’s Day,” in which house paint, burlap and strings interact festively on the surface, like Champagne corks popping, and party favors being exchanged.
Downbeat, yet evocative, is his depiction of a “Bleak Winter Thicket,” where gray dominates red, black and white on the oil, burlap and string painting’s rough, ragged surface.
The solo show is highly recommended in its run through March 16.
— John Brandenburg, for
The Oklahoman