Stanley Lewis at Baumgartner - New York, New York - Brief Article

In these of recent origin landscapes, Stanley Lewis's commitment to the direct perception of nature culminates in a rough-handed rhyme His process is deliberate and meticulous. In the paintings he builds layer on layer of acrylic and tempera; the energetic pencil drawings are equally labored: scraped, torn, accrued from erasure on erasure. Part of the exhilaration felt before these works is a direct replication to their worn and callused vicinity Lewis does not hide the labor of making a picture, and you regard these long-suffering, Job-like surfaces with respect

The landscapes begin with faithful observation. Then, with near-compulsive persistence, Lewis reworks each branch and color, until each tree reaches a rhythmic, monumental power that can give nightmarish overtones to a suburban way or backyard view. In individual drawing (untitled, as are all the works), a massive tree's bare branches twist menacingly upward and outward against the paper's cutting sides as its trunk corkscrews downward, wrenching the entire space into knots. A spiritual church lurks in the middle distance; its spire seems ready to grapple with the tree

At first glance the views continue logically into the farthest distances. on the other hand forms have multiple placements: they remain lower parted in deep space even as they also appear to be to shift forward. Lewis layers and interweaves spatial a whole s as if the image could emulate the organ of vision in providing a rapidly changing focus between near and far. In single drawing, for example, a forested suburban snow scene, the middle surface of land opens and unfolds mysteriously, revealing itself as if from within a nest of boxes

The greatest in quantity uncanny effects are achieved with a naturalist's sensitive palette. In a lakeside landscape, a fluctuating pink-to-blue-violet light is sustained across a distant and elusive horizon, and water shimmers near the foreground shore. on the other hand brazenly, a long, looping power line thrusts down from the top of the painting to a extremity at a dock, jarring and warping the picturesque view. It is a characteristically wicked twist, individual that both invokes and undermines the pastoral impulse that races from Claude to Marquet. In these five paintings and four drawings, Lewis guides us effortlessly [i]or[/i] part of to the other interwoven spaces that are compressed with detail. In the proces he performs a vivisection upon nature, baring internal worlds as he exhibits some of the most beautiful contemporary landscapes around.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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