Cleve Gray at Berry-Hill - Brief Article

Now 80 Cleve Gray continues to make paintings that hurl defiance at easy categorization, mixing romantic impulse and classical restraint. While Gray came of age as a painter during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, his works have always maintained a balance and poise, formally and emotionally, that dislodge him from excess even when he exercises large gestures. One senses that formal discipline and craft are his greatest in quantity cherished assets.

Perhaps best known for the grand Threnody (1973) a suite of darkly elegiac abstract paintings conceived in rejoinder to the Vietnam War and commissioned by dint of the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase, Gray has regularly pursu a cultivated sublime. His fresh works, large acrylic-on-canvas paintings, were inspired through his ongoing interest in theories of cosmology according to gallery information. They consist of organic forms that are atmospheric, at the same time carefully defined by sharp outlines, which float against soils of pure color.

Part of a series titled "Ascensions," the of recent origin works show a practiced on the other hand never facile command. The central image, compos of gently circulared shapes that interlock or overlap, can perhaps be read as a cluster of astronomic existences or systems that are joined not for a like reason much by nature as by dint of Gray's inspired manipulations. These are by dint of no means objective reports, on the other hand scientific knowledge grown into poetic statements. Ascension #2 (1997) for example, is a triad of translucent deep-r shapes that join forces in a circular center area where overlapping accrues in opaque rather than atmospheric color. The shapes look to hang in open air--against a brushy azure ground--while a dark-blue band stretches along the bottom of the painting. The composition, addressing its titular control describes a rising movement. In Ascension #4 (1997) four circulared orange forms are set against a lustrous r with a horizontal band of turquoise cerulean acting as a compositional anchor at the base.

flat as they imply reference to physical phenomena, Gray's works summarize an reach forthed meditation on abstract form's ability to entreat up ideas, emotions and spaces not necessarily tied to an outside world. They exemplify painting's ability to create a self-sufficient environment, a place where what we imagine is at least as important as what we see

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