BAY AREA PAINTERS
East meets west
In the 1950s, a group of San Francisco Bay Area painters took a stand against the strictures of abstract expressionism that had gripped their colleagues in New York. In 1949, David Park had hauled all his abstract paintings to the Berkeley city dump. Among the painters who began to paint figuratively with the painterly approach of abstract expressionism were Park, Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff. The painter Robert Bechtle commented on the period, “Figurative work looked shockingly avant-garde.”
The tradition of figurative painting in the area continues. Gallery Henoch in New York is presenting the exhibition Bay Area Painters featuring the work of Kim Cogan, Susan Goldsmith, Gary Ruddell and Eric Zener November 21 through December 14.
In her Autumn Sampling II (diptych), Goldman’s media are white gold leaf with pigment print, metallic watercolors, acrylic paint and resin on panel. She uses contemporary techniques to emulate ancient Chinese screens adding an illusion of depth. She explains that as the viewer walks by her paintings “you will see the colors change similar to how colors change in nature based on different times of day or how the wind modifies the effect of sunlight on leaves and branches.”
Cogan paints the grittiness of the city in his oil on canvas Dumbo at Dusk. It is a brooding take on New York by a West Coast artist. Dumbo, which stands for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass,” was an industrial neighborhood that has become Brooklyn’s epicenter for the arts, flourishing in the grit. Cogan paints the effect of light and atmosphere from the nearly silhouetted Brooklyn Bridge to the reflections on the windshields of the parked cars.
In the 1990s Ruddell made a shift from illustration to figurative art. He says, “For me, the act of painting is a way of knowing a process, of seeing. I like to think of my paintings as stills in a film, suspended moments, a private glimpse into the human condition. I paint figures as I see myself interacting with objects, almost as if it is a play in progress… What I am after are images of man’s relationship to his environment and his system of life in a ritualized role.” The figure in Girl with a Shot of Courage approaches the precarious unknown from the precarious known.
Zener’s figure in Across the Divide is equally as precarious. For most of us, developing balance in our lives is a constant battle. Zener’s figure moves forward with confidence from one secure place to the next concentrating on her goal. Zener often comments on the human condition in his paintings but revels in the fact that they are paintings. He says, “I enjoy realism, but embrace looseness at times and want the paintings to be about paint and painting rather than attempting to re-create a photo.”