Chairman of the Painting/Printmaking department at Kansas City Art Institute, Rosser moved to the United States from South Wales in 1972. Although trained as a painter, he has spent many of his productive years as an artist constructing sculptures and assemblages. However, in 1998 he returned to painting due to an unfortunate mishap in his studio. During a thunderstorm he was trying to make some repairs in his studio and fell from a stepladder. Rosser received a severe concussion and broke his wrist. These injuries put an end to his sculptures and assemblages since he could no longer use his power tools to create these works. In the fall of 1998 he took a year long sabbatical and began focusing on painting once again. During the past couple of years he has produced more than forty paintings. These new paintings are fresh and not overworked, but visually pleasing. He used palette knives, stencils, squeegees and masking tape in lieu of paintbrushes. In False Boundary, Rosser uses an elliptical motif in a repeating fashion that creates a sense of rhythm. The recurring elliptical shapes characterize this series of paintings. However, other paintings just previous to this work have ?tails? on the ellipses. In this painting the ?tails? are gone, but there are now block forms opposite the ellipses. A real sense of movement exists where the artist has dragged the paint quickly across the surface. The colors of the ellipses turn from a black at the top to white at the bottom of the row. An energetic change seems to be at play in this new body of work by Rosser.
Acrylic On Canvas
Super Freak
from the series Bath (Love is Blind #2)
In childhood, Natkin recalls a dream where he dives into an Oriental rug and as he floats down into the rug he passes through bejeweled mazes of color that appear exotic to him. This recurring dream is not surprising to anyone familiar with this artist?s work, since much of Natkin?s work reminds one of textiles. He achieves this look by his use of cross-hatching, blottings, dottings and his own technique of transferring textures right onto the canvas by pressing with a heavy cloth or paper towel.
King Tige
Born in Japan to American parents, Larry Poons changed his name professionally to Lawrence Poons in 1982. In this painting titled King Tige, he had begun painting vertical squirts of paint on his canvas. In earlier works, he painted in sweeping arcs that ran diagonally across the surface of the canvas. These thick vertical drips of paint applied to the canvas recall earlier times for some. Melted crayons in art class often comes to mind as does making ?cool? candle holders using wine bottles and a variety of different colored candles. The vertical drips of paint in King Tige end abruptly at the top of the canvas. Some think of waterfalls or waves while viewing Poon?s large vertical paintings with their unusual mix of colors and thick textures. Before taking up painting, Poons studied music with the modern composer, John Cage at the New England Conservatory of Music in the mid 1950’s. After two years studying music, he switched to painting. He attended the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965.
Summer Seizure
Known as one of the Colorfield painters, Olitski developed his own unique method of this style of painting. First, he saturated an unprimed canvas with paint by dragging it through a trough of acrylic paint. The next step involved spraying paint on the already wet canvas. Sometimes this step involved one spray gun and other times Olitski would use as many as three at once. This spray gun method allowed him to achieve differences in the densities of color. Summer Seizure exemplifies this technique employed by Olitski. He abandoned this method upon discovering how dangerous the fumes were that were emitted while spraying with the Magna acrylic paint. He wisely decided to change to the water-based Aqua-tec. Once he changed paints he started working with a variety of nozzles for better control and no longer needed to use more than one spray gun at once. Olitski has written on the back side of this canvas ?To Clem?. Also found on the back is a sticker printed ?Collection of Clement Greenberg.
from the series Bath (Pharoah)
In childhood, Natkin recalls a dream where he dives into an Oriental rug and as he floats down into the rug he passes through bejeweled mazes of color that appear exotic to him. This recurring dream is not surprising to anyone familiar with this artist?s work, since much of Natkin?s work reminds one of textiles. He achieves this look by his use of cross-hatching, blottings, dottings and his own technique of transferring textures right onto the canvas by pressing with a heavy cloth or paper towel. Natkin once was on a train traveling to his studio when he noticed a fisherman?s sweater. He stared at the large looped popcorn style weave of the sweater for a long while. He began imagining the results he could achieve in his paintings if he used it and he decided he must have it. The story ends by the artist offering the fisherman $50 for his bedraggled sweater and the other fishermen then offering to sell Natkin their own clothing. He immediately exited at the next stop to avoid any further embarrassment. Pharaoh typifies the artist?s abundant use of color and texture that creates a fabric-like surface. His ability to unify his overlays of color of texture is evident in this painting. Light appears to travel right through this work that exhibits his love of pattern and paint so well.