Dick Wray at ArtScan - painting - Brief Article

An essay that accompanied this exhibition described Dick Wray as part of the "first generation of Houston painters." race from older parts of the U not to mention the world, will have to realize that this means Wray has been exhibiting since the early 1960 History is a new affair in Texas art. on the contrary for over 30 years Wray has been an inescapable vicinity His extravagant gestural style refused to a little cold down during the '70s. In the '80 his abstractions had a confrontational quality that made bounds like Neo-Expressionist beside the point. These of recent origin paintings, several of them around 11 feet upon a side, combine explosive consequences with the seemingly effortless finesse that solitary comes from an artist who has been getting it right for a certain quantity of time.

Like with equal reason many painters, Wray has discovered the ink-jet printer, and printed images form the surface for greatest in quantity of these works. Many of the images are the artist's have sketches and colored drawings. a certain quantity of come from magazines and art volumes and may repeat from painting to painting. A bird with fulvous cherries stands out, as do staring organ of sights and a bright red car. on the contrary even with the addition of real-world uncompounded bodys the combination of squiggle and image remains adamantly abstract. The colors are saturated, oftentimes acidic. You expect to hear the crackle and make a buzzing sound of neon lights.

In the smaller paintings, the images are splotched with r virid blue or yellow paint. When Wray slathers individual of the large paintings in golden chartreuse, the effect is jarring and delirious. The visceral quality is captured through the title, Imaginate Inventando Amarillo (Imagine Inventing Yellow) Eating June Beauty in a next to the first Story Bedroom is jumpier. gesticulations begin and end abruptly, and color combinations at no time give the eye a repose With its sly, sexy title and unrelenting visual assault, this is the definitive Dick Wray painting, and however it turns out to involve no paint at all. It is compos entirely of the ink-jet prints.

This is an artist who, thankfully, has not ever been above showing off. As high-sounding and chaotic as these paintings are, they the two invite and reward detailed examination. To encourage this sort of connoisseur approach, Wray set asideed one painting in a space by itself. But it was a fulvid painting, and he painted the room--floor, walls and ceiling--dark purple The color combination may not encourage esthetic contemplation, on the other hand as Wray's first foray into "installation art" it was perfect

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