New American Paintings #81

New American Paintings (Juried Exhibitions in Print) issue #81 has just arrived on magazine racks. It covers artists throughout the Mid-Atlantic region and offers a selection of work by forty painters living in Pennsylvania, Virgina, and Maryland. The juror for this particular issue is George Kinghorn (Director and Curator, University of Maine Museum of Art) who states in the opening essay that "...there is no prevailing style in painting today". While this may be true in some sense, a casual glance through this as well as past issues reveals a few very obvious trends popular among painters these days. First, and most striking of these, is the use of animal imagery. In previous editions of the publication one regularly happened upon pictures depicting rabbits; more recently, deer seem to be the animal of choice. The current issue contains at least one painting in which deer can be found though past issues have often included multiple examples. Another "style" seen over and over again is the seemingly offhand placement of figures (animal, human) and structures within large expanses of negative white space. In #81 I counted no less than ten artists using this approach. Again, prior volumes contain many more examples. The third "prevailing style" encountered from issue to issue is the partially abstracted and fragmented apocalyptic landscape. These sometimes combine expressionistic brushwork with overlays of computer generated designs and shapes to present overly busy visions of instability and "flux", as the artists themselves explain in their accompanying statements. Rather than providing insight, these statements only serve to confirm the symbolic overload of much of the work here. In the midst of this, the paintings of Robert Kogge, Charles Ritchie, and Larry Francis provide refreshment by virtue of their directness and relative simplicity .
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