MICHAEL
GREGORY |
Michael Gregory,
Untitled, 2001, oil on wood panel |
| Michael Gregory
was born in Los Angeles, California in 1955. He received a B.F.A. from the
San Francisco Art Institute. He resides in Bolinas, California. |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
Gregory's
paintings radiate a contemporary Old Master look, built of manifold layers
of oil on wood. Unlike his brilliantly colored still-lifes which preceded
and invited the new work, the paintings are quiet of palette, white, black,
gray, with a mere suggestion of warmth added by a sepia glow. Once a symbol
of progress in American culture, these silos, still standing strong, now
regarded as relics, could only be part and parcel of the American horizon
and landscape. |
| Interested
in returning to the landscape, a subject which occupied the artist's work
and mind for the '80s, Gregory was inspired by black and white photographs
of wooden buildings from the '30s with fascinating and eccentric configurations.
Buildings that seem like fantasy wood constructions with ziggurat sides
come front and center, pushing the edges of the frame. |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
Some of Gregory's
structures are frontal, flat, textured, others are cylindrical grain elevators
weathered by years of time and use, cathedral-like in grandeur. As materials
changed in this country and became richer (from wood to corrugated metal
to tile to concrete) shapes and structures changed evolving into simpler,
iconic, rounded forms. |
| Gregory paints
the silos as single images, dominating a vertical format. The silos are
based on a composite of photographs taken by the artist, never a specific
building or place, always Gregory's invention. Fascinated by the range of
materials of silo structures, Gregory created tools to paint these paintings. |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
While singular
paintings, the artist envisions the silos as a series in a dialogue of contrasts
and similarities, of nuance, theme and variation. Gregory contemplated Monet's
signature variations in light on a cathedral or haystack in creating these
new works, his turn-of-the-century paintings. Like his tulips, singular
icon images of the flower set against a black background, symbols of impermanence,
the silos are symbols of time and history. |
| Gregory has
been inspired by masters throughout art history. His early landscapes of
the '80s owed their debt to George Innes, Martin Johnson Heade and Albert
Pinkham Ryder, combined with the powerful pull of the California landscape
to which the artist traveled on a daily basis between the Sierra foothills
and the Central Valley, a flat horizon of landscape as far as the eye can
see. |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
His still
lifes which preceded the silos, are infused with his appreciation for the
Spanish masters, Zurburan and Sanchez Cotan. The silos make reference to
the work of Sheeler and Demuth. In sum, these are American paintings by
an American artist of structures within which live history, a sense of time
gone by when the pioneering spirit created shapes of whimsy and non-conformity. |
link to MICHAEL GREGORY TULIPS
link
to MICHAEL GREGORY BIOGRAPHY |
Michael Gregory,
Palouse, 2001,
oil on wood panel, 45 x 35 inches |
