DON EDDY November 2 - December 4, 2002
Eddy's new work takes him deeper into the explorations of nature, perception and life's mysteries. Most of the pieces in this exhibition, painted over the last two years, are multi-paneled: some have arched tympanum-like sections, which reference shapes used in Romanesque and Gothic architecture, as well as configurations of religious paintings in medieval and Renaissance times.	The Hesychia Tide
Both Sides Jordan	By association to the tympanum, Eddy's multi-panel paintings take on a quietly spiritual aura in their contemplative examination of earth's changes and riches. Some of the paintings are triptychs with three sections vertically or horizontally juxtaposed, others are polyptychs, including four or five wooden panels. And for the first time in many years, the artist has painted a few works on single arched panels, each celebrating a fulsome and sacred aspect of nature--a blossoming tree, reflections of autumnal branches in a pond, peaceful, rippling waters.
While Eddy's earlier works of the '80s were object oriented, depicting glassware, silverware and toys on a reflective series of glass shelves, his new paintings (and works of the past decade) have turned to the imagery and impact of what we behold in the world. No longer does the artist select images for cerebral, narrative or metaphorical reasons; he juxtaposes images in poetic relationship to one another, "echoing ecosystems," as the artist calls these connections of structure.	Daphnis Spring
Aqueous Lumina II	In Donald Kuspit's book Don Eddy, The Art of Paradox, the author writes: "an Eddy picture is a kind of Chinese box in which each stage of consciousness folds into the other, creating an all-in-one effect, giving the picture a magical density and grandeur."
To create his paintings, the artist utilizes a unique system he has developed over the years-- underpainting in three colors. The first layer is phthalocyanine green in a series of tiny circles about 1/16th of an inch in diameter. Eddy meticulously paints each of his works first in tiny green circles, a meditative process of setting the values for the painting. This layer is followed by brown, then purple, to separate warm from cool colors.	A Line Divided: Water Music and Dust Dancer
The Ecstatic Dancer	He may then add between 20 to 30 layers of transparent color to achieve the radiant final palette of each painting. Eddy draws a map onto the canvas that only he can read, and then begins to create a universe. In conversations with the artist in the studio he might allow as how he is not "really making images, but simply making circles of different value." Eddy's philosophical approach to his work is as much conceptual and abstract as it is about the images he paints.
Moving away from an atmosphere of intense activity in his earlier works (of shelves filled with inanimate objects reflected multiple times) and a fascination for order in chaos, Eddy's new works are infused with an atmosphere of quiet and a balance between that which is cerebral, emotional and spiritual.	Anteros Bough for P. W.
Skyrider	Donald Kuspit writes: "For all the activity in the nineties paintings--the abruptly changing images and intricate drama of nature--there is a remarkable air of silence about them. It is the silence that is witness to the sacred, the absence of sound that contains within it awareness of a sacred presence."
In the five-part celebratory painting, The Divided Line:Hesychast Dancer, Eddy pushes image and palette to the limit. Titled for a word in the Greek contemplative lexicon meaning stillness, the arched-top panel is a riot of blossoming trees in spring's full regalia, captured from a vista looking up toward the sky; the bottom panel, in equal intensity, captures autumn's changing cloak with blue sky above the trees; in the center row are three small panels--on left and right is a silvery ostrich curled into itself, a sinuous circular creature preening yet symbolic of the circle of life, and in the middle a cluster of cream white roses open to full perfume.	The Divided Line:Hesychast Dancer
Aura	The juxtaposition of images is visually arresting as the painting's surface quivers with detail: tiny fluttering spring blossoms, silvery feathers, bristling pine needles-- myriad incidents to draw the viewer in to a visual dance that is at the same time a quiet moment celebrating the earth as it turns.
Don Eddy was born in Long Beach, California in 1944. He received a B.F.A. from the University of Hawaii in 1967 and an M.F.A. in 1969 from the same institution. The artist attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1969-70, for post-graduate study.	The Divided Line: Hiding in Plain Sight
Timeminder	Don Eddy's work has been widely shown throughout this country at the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; Bergstrom-Mahler Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Boise Art Museum, Idaho; The Brooklyn Museum, New York, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts, Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York; The Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York; The Oakland Museum, California; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City; Orlando Museum of Art, Florida; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Tampa Museum of Art, Florida; Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, Virginia; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Whitney Museum of America Art, New York; Wichita Art Museum, Kansas; among others, and abroad at Aarhus Kunst Museum, Denmark; Australia National Gallery, Canberra; Gl. Holtegaards, Copenhagen; The Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Kunstverein, Hannover; Kunsthalle, Nuremberg; Salas de Exposiciones de Bellas Artes, Madrid.
The artist's work is represented in numerous public collections: Akron Art Museum; Boise Art Museum, Idaho; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts; Evansville Museum of Arts & Science, Indiana; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hofstra Museum, Hempstead, New York; Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Art, Oklahoma City; Pioneer Museum and Haggin Galleries, California; Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence; San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; Springfield Art Museum, Missouri; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York; The Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; among others, and in collections abroad: Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota; Neue Galerie, Aschen; Sainte Etienne Museum, France; Utrecht Museum, Belgium.	Aura II
Don Eddy Book	The book Don Eddy, The Art of Paradox, written by Donald Kuspit and published by Hudson Hills Press, New York, is available through the gallery.
Don Eddy resides in New York.	Don Eddy - Photography