Woody GWyn s O l I T A r y
p l A C E s
WOODY GWYN SOLITARY PLACES
JULY 31 - SEPTEMBER 7, 2015
LewAllenGalleries Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com cover: Undercurrent, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 36 x 60 in
WOODY GWYN: SOLITARY PLACES
JULY 31 - SEPTEMBER 7, 2015
With a riveting body of new paintings on view at LewAllen Galleries beginning July 31, Woody Gwyn celebrates his 50th year of exhibitions of his striking work created from masterful combinations of space, light and color rendered in oil, egg tempera, watercolor and other media. In his virtuosic landscapes, he combines faithful allegiance to “painting things the way they are” with a uniquely uncanny way of looking at those things and presenting them as though the depiction is entirely natural and seemingly unlabored.
With these techniques, Gwyn produces vistas that are both arresting in their verisimilitude and profound in their allusive meditative, even transformative, power. His latest body of work, Solitary Places, brings together expansive, glistening ocean views, tranquil lakeside reflections, curving desert roads, majestic bridges, and endless skies – all of which exemplify Gwyn’s seductive skill in visually uniting intimacy and immensity. A stillness and lack of human or animal figure contrasts mystically with the liveliness imbued from Gwyn’s sumptuous color and light to create an aura of nearly spiritual significance and seamless beauty.
However, upon closer examination, one quickly realizes that these works are no ordinary pictures of place. Instead, they appear to glow with a nearly heavenly light and the total absence of any human presence conjures an intensifying sense of mystery the longer one looks. It becomes clear that these works are achievements of enormous artistic creativity and technical mastery. Unusual perspective and the vivid crystalline light combine with an extraordinary facility for rendering the elements of his landscapes in agonizingly minute detail to create contemporary paintings that rival even those of the great European Old Masters.
The early 20th century Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote that “works of art are of an infinite solitude.” In the seemingly infinite spaces of many of Gwyn’s landscapes, this solitude is resonant. The power of this remarkable aspect of Gwyn’s work is derived in part from apparent contradiction: presence through absence. The works seem quintessentially full of life despite the absence of any except for grass and trees. The paintings exude a sense of peaceful and resplendent calm, yet they are simultaneously full of excitement and vitality. They often illustrate a surprising equivalence of the
Cambria, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 34 x 90 in 2
difficult medium of egg tempera, that luscious but difficult material dating back to the 4th century, used by the early Renaissance masters. It is associated more with the likes of Duccio, Bellini and da Vinci than contemporary artists. Unlike modern paints, egg tempera requires the artist to create his or her own unique colors and demands meticulous and time-consuming layered application. But tempera’s capacity to create resplendent concentrated colors, gleaming with reflected light, is singularly captivating at Gwyn’s masterful hand. It is a key part of Gwyn’s unique ability to transform images of “solitary places” into visual metaphors of the boundlessness we aspire for our own souls.
beauty possible from the manmade as well as the natural. Highway pavement, concrete bridgework, and iron guardrails achieve a sort of splendor congruent with that of the mountains, fields and bodies of water with which they appear. The power of their creation is manifest by the very absence, in both cases, of overt images of their creators. Even the “empty” ocean or desert invites the viewer to a place full of quiet and comforting awe. In pieces like, Abiquiu Curve and Junction, roadside gravel, rocky crevices, and rusting guardrails are treated as sacred sculpture, rendered with the same reverence da Vinci felt for the sleeve folds of the Mona Lisa. This respect for the smallest detail – manmade or natural – creates a silent wonder of the physical world that emanates powerful insights about man’s place within it. The viewer is captivated by an exhilarating tension as the road leads the eyes through the painting, turning the ordinary, suddenly intensely significant.
Woody Gwyn was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1944, and received his arts education from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. For fifty years, his work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in a wide array of premier galleries. His work has been exhibited in national and international museums including the Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel; le Centre Nationale des Arts Plastiques, Paris, France; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery of George Washington University, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe. He is the recipient of New Mexico’s highest artistic honor — the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
This delight in the often overlooked details and majesty of solitude in open space is captured in these lines from the poem Julian and Maddalo by the 19th century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: This ride was my delight. I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. Gwyn’s paintings honor the hopeful idea contained in these lines that there can be experienced a sense of timeless infinity within an undistracted contemplation of the simple beauty present in the world around us. His striking portraits of “solitary places” are themselves startlingly poetic in the limitless beauty they radiate when we look. Along with his innovative subjects, dramatic angles, panoramic formats, startling color, and aggressive cropping, Gwyn employs the rich but 3
Abiquiu Curve, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 23 1/2 x 231/2 in
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Watercress II, 2014, oil on canvas, 13 x 30 in
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Grand Fog Bank, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 44 x 72 in
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Junction, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 18 1/5 x 29 in
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Spring, 2015, egg tempera on gessoed paper, 13 3/4 x 13 1/4 in
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October in Galisteo, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 8 x 25 in
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El Rito I, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 8 x 8 in
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El Rito II, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 8 x 8 in
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Root Ball, 2005 - 2015, acrylic on panel, 23 3/4 x 15 1/2 in
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Root Ball II, 2005, graphite on paper, 23 3/4 x 15 1/2 in
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El Creston, 2014, egg tempera on canvas, 8 1/8 x 29 7/8 in
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The Gap, 2015, egg tempera on canvas, 8 x 30 in
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Summer Moon, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 9 x 12 in
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Via Lactea, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 24 x 18 in
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Coyote Rock, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 3 x 2 1/4 in
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Pecos, 2014, oil on panel, 2 3/4 x 5 in
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Pond I, 2014, egg tempera on panel, 2 3/4 x 7 5/8 in
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Abiquiu Curve II, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 8 x 8 in
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Potrero II, 2015, oil on panel, 3 5/8 x 3 5/8 in
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Potrero I, 2015, oil on panel, 2 7/8 x 6 1/2 in
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Arroyo – Tree, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 5 x 15 1/4 in
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Ragged Point, 2014, egg tempera on panel, 5 x 5 in
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Santa Cruz, 2010, oil on panel, 1 3/4 x 20 in
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Puente, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 8 x 10 in
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Barranca, 2014, egg tempera on panel, 5 x 5 in
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Las Barrancas I, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 5 x 5 in
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Las Barrancas II, 2015, egg tempera on panel, 5 x 5 in
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WOODY GWYN Born 1944 San Antonio, Texas
1986 Woody Gwyn, Modernism Gallery, San Francisco, CA Education: 1986 New Works by Woody Gwyn (Travelling Exhibition): Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX McAllen International Museum, McAllen, TX Selected Solo Exhibitions: The Art Center of Waco, Waco, TX 2015 Solitary Places, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM The Museum at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 2014 Recent Landscapes, David Findlay Jr. Fine Art, The Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX New York, NY; also Woody Gwyn, 2010; Recent 1983 Woody Gwyn, Davis-McClain Galleries, Houston, TX Work, 2006; and Woody Gwyn, 2005 2013 Santa Fe’s Holy Trinity of Landscape Painting, 1982 Woody Gwyn, Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY 1981 Woody Gwyn, Heydt/Bair Gallery, Santa Fe, NM LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 1980 Woody Gwyn, Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY 2012 Elements of Landscape, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 1978 Woody Gwyn, Elaine Horwitch Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2010 Expanded Views, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 1977 Woody Gwyn, Meredith Long & Co., Houston, TX; also1975, 1974,1973,1972, 1971, 1970, 1969, Woody Gwyn: American Landscapes, George 1968,1965 Washington University, Luther Brady Gallery, 1965 Woody Gwyn, Canyon Art Gallery, Canyon TX Washington, DC 2009 Recent Paintings, Modernism, San Francisco, CA; also Fog Light and Space, 2006; Woody Gwyn, 1986; and Woody Gwyn, 1984
Woody Gwyn, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; also Between Earth and Sky, 2007; Woody Gwyn: In Human Terms, 2004; Woody Gwyn 2003; Woody Gwyn: Solitary Places, 2002; and Recent Work, 1988 2005 Woody Gwyn Revisited, Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX 2000 Woody Gwyn, MB Modern, New York, NY 1998 Woody Gwyn: Artist of the Year, Assembly of the Arts, Midland, TX 1997 Woody Gwyn, Cline-LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1996 Woody Gwyn, Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York, NY, also Woody Gwyn, 1994, New Paintings and Monotypes, 1992; Woody Gwyn, 1991; and The Edges of the Land, 1989
1995 1987
Woody Gwyn: Recent Works, Louis Newman Galleries, Beverly Hills, CA, also Woody Gwyn: Recent Work,1993 Recent Works, 1992 Woody Gwyn, Horwitch-LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Woody Gwyn, Foxley-Leach Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Selected Collections: Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM The Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Fisher Landau Center for Art, New York, NY Harvard University, Boston, MA McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY Reading Public Museum & Art Gallery, Reading, PA Selected Grants and Awards: 2010 New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts 1979 National Endowment of the Arts Grant
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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com Š 2015 LewAllen Contemporary LLC Artwork Š Woody Gwyn