Vignette: Tracey Ippolito

"I Only Have Today" by Tracy Ippolito, Acrylic on canvas, 24x30in, 2016, $850

The fantastical in art often exists in a gray area between fine art and genre, yet the Surrealists are a movement that reached farther than is often acknowledged. Everyone knows Salvador Dali, of course, but when looking at the work of Tracey Ippolito, we are reminded of less famous Surrealist painters such as Leonid Afremov and Jane Small. Ippolito, who is mostly self-trained, claims a different classification in describing her work, but the debt to Surrealism is clear.

“All my life, I have been an artist, thirsty for exploring, sharing, and making new discoveries,” explains Ippolito. “In the midst of creating my art, I began to gather a collection of ideas to bring something new to my images. This became a lifelong project, Universalism.”

“I have always utilized my own life as a medium in my art, using my own journey to punctuate and hopefully illuminate the journey for us all. I have always felt a strong, inherent responsibility to others to create experiences, such as I have had whether due to mental illnesses or spirituality, awakening us to something higher than what we know, or who we think we are.”

"The Angel and the Apparition" by Tracy Ippolito, Acrylic on canvas, 24x36in, 2016, $950

“I approach my canvasses as if they are open windows that anyone can look through to see into another world. The intention is for the viewer to see so deeply into the painting, that eventually, the line of sight reconnects with the individual. This is to bring about a unique, all-encompassing experience which not only heightens the personal notion of “self”, but increases the concept of oneness or co-consciousness through the merging of worlds. Through exploring a compendium of subjects on one visual plane at a time, we enter wholly into the pursuit of finding ourselves, remembering where we came from, and discovering what we mean.”

LIke so many artists, Ippolito is striving to communicate something so intensely individual in broad enough terms to connect the viewer’s own, equally individual spiritual sensibility.

Ippolito has exhibited in several local group exhibits in 2017, including Cherchez lez Femme,  at Prophecy Ink, and The Enduring Nude at Kaviar Gallery, both in Louisville.

Permanent Collections
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville KY
Nelson Atkins Museum, Rochester NY
Royal Palace, Kingdom of Bahrain, Middle East

Hometown: Gilford, NH
Education: Self-taught
Website: www.artofuniversalism.com
Instagram: /Artofuniversalism            

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"Recluse" by Tracy Ippolito, Acrylic on canvas, 24x36in, 201*, NFS

"Ladyhead" by Tracy Ippolito, Oil on canvas, 16x20in, 2016, $675

"Chrysalis" by Tracy Ippolito, Oil on canvas, 30x40in, 2017, NFS

"The Battle for Sanity" by Tracy Ippolito, Oil on canvas, 22x26in, 2016, NFS

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Vignette: Shawn Marshall

"Cabin View 1" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x40in, 2018, POR

When Shawn Marshall was inspired to paint the view from an airplane window, we might assume that it was a rainy flight, with hopefully not too much turbulence, because Marshall’s balance between abstract and representational might suggest an overhead perspective on landscape through a rain-smeared pane of glass: the details are blurred, and the contours defining the roads and fields below are elusive, hard to pin down.

Abstraction makes you look harder at things. The central question in the viewer’s mind becomes - what do I see? The more cynical might phrase the question differently: what am I looking at? Yet one might offer that to be demand that art explain itself to you is actually the lazy approach. Marshall challenges the viewer, enticing them with just enough discernible representation, but layering a veneer of abstract expressionism between them and her subject, built with a heavily textured impasto that forces an immediate visceral relationship with the surface. Paint is always seductive.

"Listless" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 24x24in, 2018, POR

“I create a three-dimensional surface on the canvas; always striving for balance between the layers of impasto and the underlying landscape beyond.” – Shawn Marshall

The bisected compositional structure, normally recognizing the natural horizon line encountered in the open, rural landscape, remains in these airborne point-of-view, Marshall’s eye always finding a road or river that cuts through the quadrants of fields and developments below.

Marshall was awarded First Place in the 2017 MAZIN Juried Art Exhibition that just closed at The Patio Gallery at the Jewish Community Center in Louisville, Kentucky, and she is about to open a solo show at Craft(s) Gallery & Mercantile in Louisville that will run from March 2 through 31, with an Opening Reception March 2 from 6:00-10:00pm.

Her work is in numerous private collections including PNC Bank, Pittsburgh, PA, Commonwealth Bank, Louisville, KY, and the University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, KY.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: 1992, Bachelor of Architecture, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; 1996, Master of Architecture, Minor Fine Arts, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; 2009, Master of Art in Teaching, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY
Website: www.shawnlmarshall.com
Gallery Representation: Pyro Gallery (Louisville),  New Editions Gallery (Lexington), Yust Gallery (Cincinnati)

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"Cabin View 2" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x40in, 2018, POR

"The Passage" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x48in, 2017, POR

"Bleeding Rock" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 20x24in, 2017, POR

"Winter Field" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 36x48in, 2018

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Vignette: Kayla Bischoff

"The universal language of humanity spanning across time and geography informs my work." - Kayla Bischoff

"Brouhaha" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on birch panel, 35x54in, 2018, $675

When Kayla Bischoff cites her influences, Jean Dubuffet seems to be the clearest line: the utter denial of perspective and the embrace of his ‘art brut’ aesthetic, which celebrated the idea of art produced by ‘non-professionals.’ Bischoff certainly is no amateur, but her dense, kinetic compositions are filled with figures and faces rendered in a deliberately unsophisticated style, as if anybody could draw them.

Yet a laymen’s vision of what is accomplished art would arguably still be colored by an ambition to create form and space with detail and depth built from craft. What Bischoff gives us instead are simple images layered one upon another, forcing relationships and building depth through a density of marks that threatens to overwhelm the viewer; except she knows when to pull up. Her world is all surface, but what a busy, busy surface it is.

“The style in which I paint is a balance of abstraction, representation, spontaneous expression, and conscious decisions. The characters are hurriedly drawn in frenzy, and then built upon with several layers of paint to enhance the depth of the surface. I convey my ideas in paintings because the immediacy allows for uninhibited mark making. The tactile nature of the paint feels authentic while connecting me to the earliest form of human visual expression.” 

“As a contemporary artist I actively study and absorb art history. I seek to create a connection between contemporary art and that of past civilizations. I reference ancient artworks, such as figurines and masks from various cultures — Andean, Mesoamerican, Japanese, African, Aboriginal, etc. The universal language of humanity spanning across time and geography informs my work. The use of stylized figures acts as a communicative shorthand of body language and facial `expressions. Through the playfully chaotic layers of figurative abstraction, my work comments on the plight of the individual and humanity as a whole.”

“Gaping mouths, shrugging shoulders, flailing arms, and cackling faces occupy the surface in an overcrowded frenzy. On the surface my paintings are vibrant and playful; however, I invite the viewer to peer closer into the cluttered surface of detailed disorder to discover many of the abstracted figures experience some inner trepidation.”

In 2017, Bischoff had her 2nd solo exhibit, Push/Pull: Paintings by Kayla Bischoff, at Jasper Community Arts: Krempp Gallery, Jasper Arts Center, Jasper IN.

Bischoff is having a two-person show with Bob Lockhart at PYRO Gallery in Louisville, February 22 through April 7, 2018. There will be an opening reception Friday, February 23 from 5:00-7:00pm, and a Gallery Talk featuring both artists Sunday, February 25 at 1:00pm.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA, (Magna Cum Laude) Studio Art: Painting Emphasis/Minors in Art History & Psychology, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY, 2014
Website: kaylabischoff.com
Instagram: /knbischoff/
Gallery Representation: Galerie Hertz (Louisville)         

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"Egress" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on birch panel, 12 x 12in, 2017, $225

"Hoopla" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on canvas, 24x30in, 2018, $525

"False Faces" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60in, 2017, $875

"The Blame Game" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on canvas, 36x48in, 2017, $675

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Legacy: Bob Thompson (1937-1966)

“Thompson was in a class nearly by himself in recognition in the world of art. Not until the emergence of Jean-Michel Basquait in the 1980s would another African-American be so embraced.” – from the African American Registry (AAReg).

On March 1, Louisville Visual Art will award Vinhay Keo the 1st Annual Rising Star Award. The award is meant to recognize a young artist who seems poised to have a more widespread impact in the world of visual art. It honors the memory of Louisville-born artist Bob Thompson, and cites his career as an example of exactly what it might mean to be labeled, “rising star.”

Thompson was born in Louisville but came of age in Boston, where he had been sent to live with relatives after his father was killed in an automobile accident. He entered college as a pre-med student, but increasing depression over the loss of his father left him troubled and unsatisfied. Seeking to alleviate his grief, he returned home to enroll as an art student (with a scholarship) at the University of Louisville in 1956.

According to his entry in Smithsonian American Art Museum, his natural talent and enthusiasm prompted legendary U of L Professor Mary Spencer Nay to encourage him to spend a summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts:

“There were two important art schools in the old fishing village of Provincetown—the Seong Moy Art School and an older, more established institution under the direction of Hans Hofmann, the innovative abstract expressionist painter. One of Hofmann's students at that time was the young artist Jan Müller, who departed from Hofmann's aesthetic principles of nonobjective painting in favor of a figurative style.

Provincetown was an exciting environment for Thompson, and he was especially attracted to Müller's figural paintings and the works of Red Grooms, from Nashville, Tennessee. Grooms was also involved in performances that were later called "Happenings" and represented a new aesthetic concept. Thompson was an active participant in many of Grooms' productions.”

Conventional wisdom for the Louisville artistic community has often held that you have to go elsewhere to “make it”, but Thompson’s story is more fluid than that canard. Coming home was clearly a crucial step in his life - its how he found his true path, yet it also was, in a very short time, the springboard for him to emerge again into the larger world of American Art.

He married Carol Plenda in 1960, and a Walter Gutman Foundation Grant and a John Hay Whitney Fellowship enabled them to spend the first two and-a-half years of their marriage in Europe. Upon their return, Thompson joined the Martha Jackson Gallery, where all of his exhibits made a sensation, and he sold consistently well: his work was purchased for the permanent collections of prominent museums like the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art.

Thompson’s paintings range from a large-scale, gestural abstract to a more figurative expressionism. He drew obvious inspiration from the old masters he had studied firsthand in Europe, forming compositions of biblical narratives and classical mythology rendered with an expressionist’s sense of form and color.

"Stairway to the Stars" by Bob Thompson c.1962, oil and photostat on Masonite, 40x60in, © Estate of Bob Thompson

As part of the Hite Art Institute’s 75th Anniversary Celebration, the University of Louisville mounted an exhibit in 2012, Seeking Bob Thompson: Dialogue/Object, which was curated by Hite Art Institute Gallery Director John Begley (now retired), and Slade Stumbo, who at the time was finishing his Curatorial MFA at Hite.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is the exclusive representative of the estate of Bob Thompson. Since 1996, they have presented four solo exhibitions of the artist’s work, and published catalogues for three of the shows. Most recently, the gallery presented Naked at the Edge: Bob Thompson in 2015.

Permanent Collections: (select) Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL); Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY); Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR); Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY); Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN); Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA); Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Nasher Museum of Art,  Duke University (Durham, NC); National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA); Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY); Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY); The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY); Tougaloo Art Collections, Tougaloo College (Tougaloo, MS); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY).

“Le Roi Jones and his Family” (1964) by Bob Thompson, oil on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (© Estate of Bob Thompson; courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

"Untitled (Michelangelo's Fall of Phaeton)" by Bob Thompson, 1963, gouache on paper (page from art catalogue), 12 1/8x8 3/4in, signed and dated, © Estate of Bob Thompson

"The Judgement" by Bob Thompson, 1963. Oil on canvas, 60x84in. Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, 81.214. © Estate of Bob Thompson (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 81.214_SL1.jpg)

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Written by Keith Waits.
In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, www.Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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Petersen Thomas Explores Mark Rothko

“I used to think Rothko’s work was about the emotive power of color and tone. I’m starting to think it’s about the paint.”– Petersen Thomas

Mark Rothko's Seagrams paintings at London's Tate Gallery.

The Bunbury-ShPIeL Identity Theatre is proud to present RED by John Logan. RED is the story of Mark Rothko, a Russian Jewish immigrant, who took the American modern art scene by storm in the 1950s. The play focuses on a period in which Rothko worked on the famous Seagram’s murals, commissioned by architect Philip Johnson for his prestigious new Seagram Building. When finished, he refused to deliver them, and the exact reasons are still a point of discussion. Some scholars believe that Rothko created the paintings with the understanding that they would be placed in the main lobby, and that once he was informed that the paintings would instead be installed in the adjoining Four Seasons Restaurant, he was offended. Others are of the opinion that he always knew of the location and had his own, enigmatic reasons for not delivering the pieces; reasons about which we can only now speculate. Nine of the paintings are now in residence at the Tate Gallery in London, delivered there on the morning of Rothko’s suicide in 1970.

Photo by Sarah Katherine Davis Photography

Painter Petersen Thomas became involved in the production through Louisville Visual Art, providing technical assistance - the two actors, portraying Rothko and his assistant, must finish constructing and then begin painting an 8’ x 8” canvas onstage, and some degree of expertise on Mark Rothko. “I am by no means any kind of ‘expert on Rothko, but he has always fascinated me.”

The collaboration began with time in Thomas’ downtown studio, where he “schooled” actors J. Barrett Cooper and Brandon Meeks about the methods and studio practice they are required to emulate onstage.

Director Steve Woodring and Scenic Designer Tom Tutino also prevailed upon Thomas to execute mock Rothko paintings for the set, Rothko’s New York City studio in 1958 (the rights to produce the play allow for facsimile representations but not reproductions of Rothko’s work). Thomas actually painted these in the backstage area at the Henry Clay Theatre.

"Clementine" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 48x60in, $2000

Thomas paints in different styles, but his heart is perhaps most in abstract expressionism, so his affinity for Rothko comes naturally. Red has been a dominant color in some of his work, such as “Clementine,” pictured here, which is typical of the larger-scale, color field work, although there are also cooler hues in his diminutive, “Lenith Series.”  

It is this work that gave Thomas the foundation to jump into the deep end with his exploration of Rothko. “Rothko is a perfect touchstone for so many tropes in modern art,” explains Thomas. “For instance, someone might look at his work and say, ‘I could do that.’ - Wanna bet? There is so much happening on the canvas, but it looks and feels so simple. That is incredibly hard to do. He was a virtuoso.”

"Lenith VII1" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 8x8in, $75

“For me, Rothko embodies self-doubt.  When he landed the Seagram commission, he was as revered as a living artist could be. But in response, he makes this wild gesture about the integrity of art. It was the ultimate “fuck you” to the art world. But why? Did he truly believe that the paintings were sacred? Or was that a pose? Trying to figure out the difference between genius and fraud, self and persona, is the fastest way I know to bring you face to face with the abyss.”

So what did Thomas learn about Rothko that he didn’t already know? What insight did the experience of RED provide about one of the most famous artists of the 20th century? “I used to think Rothko’s work was about the emotive power of color and tone. I’m starting to think it’s
about the paint.”

Performance schedule for the Bunbury-ShPIeL Identity Theatre production of RED at the Henry Clay Theatre, 3rd & Chestnut:

Backstage studio for RED.

February 16, 17, 22*, 23, 24,
March 1*, 2, & 3 at 7:30pm
February 18*, 25**, & March 4 at 2:00pm        

*Denotes post-show talkback, **Panel discussion

Thomas was the artist in Residence at Roma Kungsgarn, Gotland Sweden and received the Governor’s Award for Excellence at the Governor’s Art Show in Columbus, Ohio. Exhibitions include: New Art on Newbury, Boston, MA, MiSh Gallery, Columbus, OH, Lemongrass Gallery, Columbus, OH, NorDys Gallery, Birmingham, AL, Karen Lynne Gallery, Boca Raton, FL, “The Nude 2002,” Loudoun House Gallery, Lexington, KY, Drawing from Perception IV, Wright State University Art Galleries, Dayton, OH, and Fidelity Investment Building, Boston, MA.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA, Denison University, Ohio; JD, University of Michigan. 

 

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"Lenith 1" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 8x8in, $75

"Lenith V" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 8x8in, $75

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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