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Mashups: Canvases from 2013-2017 by Gregg Simpson

Gregg Simpson

My work is on the border between abstraction and surrealism, formal design and automatism. I begin a work very spontaneously, often with the canvas lying on the ground and soaked with water to make the colors flow.

Then I proceed to re-draw and mold the shapes, alternately adding and removing layers of paint to reveal the implicit imagery. Ultimately, the painting tells me how to resolve the final result, which may, or may not, correspond to anything in nature.

My paintings are usually improvised from the beginning, without a preliminary sketch. Their final form is arrived at through the direct application of paint. while elements of drawing are repeatedly allowed to appear and then are covered over again, until a final result emerges.

A work may evolve into a lyrical, atmospheric work, or one where formal structures of design suggest the figure, the landscape, or even still life, but re-interpreted into a purely imaginative realm, creating a personal, yet universal, world of forms, whose meaning changes with each viewer.

Allegory -- Gregg Simpson
Allegory
Crash Course -- Gregg Simpson
Crash Course
Floral Still Life -- Gregg Simpson
Floral Still Life
Flower Machine -- Gregg Simpson
Flower Machine
Landscape Ritual -- Gregg Simpson
Landscape Ritual
Mashup Modulation 1 -- Gregg Simpson
Mashup Modulation 1
Mashup Modulation 2 -- Gregg Simpson
Mashup Modulation 2
Mashup Monument -- Gregg Simpson
Mashup Monument
Mashup -- Gregg Simpson
Mashup
Meeting Place -- Gregg Simpson
Meeting Place
Still Life Mashup -- Gregg Simpson
Still Life Mashup
The Acrobats -- Gregg Simpson
The Acrobats
Totemic Gathering -- Gregg Simpson
Totemic Gathering
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Gregg Simpson

Born in Ottawa in 1947, Bowen Island artist Gregg Simpson has been active in visual art and music since the mid-1960s.

The west coast rainforest where he grew up and lives today is always an underlying factor in Simpson’s work, alternating with influences derived from European art, especially surrealism and lyric abstraction.

The artist’s work has evolved from the collages and Pop-influenced paintings of the 1960s, through neo-Surrealism in the 1970s to an organic abstraction in the 1980s and works based in both landscape and the figure during the last thirty years.

In 2015 and 2017 he exhibited in Berlin, Venice, Milan, Rome, and Paris in solo and select group shows. In April 2018 he will have a solo exhibition in New York.

Visit him at www.greggsimpson.com.

Author: Gregg Simpson Tags: painting, surrealism Category: Visual Art and Visual Poetry February 9, 2018

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Comments

  1. Sam Silva says

    February 21, 2018 at 7:41 pm

    incredible balance

    Reply

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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