Paint can always be, is always applied anew. The original movement of Abstract Expressionism sought unprecedented ways of creating the substance of feeling. In a newly secular age in the aftermath of WWII, the work of Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, William de Kooning and others had faith in the colour, shape and texture of paint itself.
In these contemporary works you’ll find some of the classical tenants of the genre such as the tension between chaos and control and the relentless interest in rejuvenating the medium itself. Due to the latter it’s always been a genre that has lent itself readily to renewed iterations, driven by the impulses and interests of the artist. Also by the environments they find themselves in, and those they create for themselves.
In the recent article Is Abstract Expressionism Back? by Art Basel, several painters of a younger generation have made a turn toward a different kind of abstract art. “With enlivened practices of rigorous craft and deeply felt personal stakes” they draw deeply on, but are markedly distinct to, the genre’s past. A number of these painters are showing at Art Basel Miami Beach this year, including Rachel Jones, an artist who says she undertakes an “exegesis of colour” As Art Basel describes: “She covers the canvas with thick, emphatically rendered patches of oil stick and pastel, scattered with brisk lines and blurred collisions to illustrate her interior world.”
The other featured artists are Marley Freeman, Kaveri Raina, Carmen Neely and Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Across their distinctive styles you can find an affirmative, complex use of colour often through ecstatic brushwork. More on Abstract Expressionism from Art Basel:
From Jackson Pollock’s splatters to Helen Frankenthaler’s smears, from Cy Twombly’s squiggles to Mark Rothko’s blocks of colour, the canonical Abstract Expressionist artists eschewed representation to foreground the intense affective capabilities of colour, shape and the material of painting itself.
Each of the New Blood Artists curated here shows an intense energy and inventiveness, often seeming to arrive sui generis, of their own accord. See Robert Lanz’s alchemic splendour, evocative of deep space wonders – a crab nebula? In addition to oil paint this artist uses ink, tar, copper and schellac: a fascinating process to awesome effects. Frequently these abstract works lend themselves to a bodily language of paint– see the sinuous brushwork of Emily Oades. Compositionally her paintings will have many centres: equilibrium through multiplicity; vertical and horizontal cascades. Layers upon layers of paint arrive together to represent embodied desire.
The movement of a diffuse, totalising weather trajectory is abstracted into colour by coastal Cornwall based Laura Menzies. Then there’s the constructivist tendency of Felicity Nutt in swathes green and a plethora of other tones, and the organic flavour of Crimson Wale’s shapes looking like the limbs of petals. Likewise there’s Olivia Bartlett’s viscera and the levity of Olga Mun and Rosalyn Ng’s palettes. They sit alongside more brilliantly surfaced, uniquely styled works. If you’re interested in any of these works of art, follow the link on each image to arrive at the artist’s gallery page, where you can find out more about the artist’s practice and see their other available works. Enjoy!
Words by Maggie