Iris Series, 4 iPad, 1 oil on panel

#1

#2

#3, Flowers and Chair

#4, White Flowers

Iris, 24" x 18", oil on panel

I would like to draw your attention to the new exhibit by artist Iris Osterman at the Bowery Gallery in New York City. An excerpt of her press release:

"Bowery Gallery is pleased to present the third exhibition at the gallery of works by Iris Osterman, whose starting point are the streams, falls, rock formations and forests around her home in Massachusetts. Working with a restricted palette in oil and encaustic, the images come from the area where she has lived for the past two decades, as well as from trips to Maine, New York State and California."

For more information and to see images from the show, please consult the Bowery Gallery website.

This series of irises were done from life. The iPad images informed the oil painting. I like their boldness, snappy, and the complementary colors of purple and yellow, yellow-green. Some of them relate to other abstractions I have done including Blue Yellow Radiant from 2009.

I love the way Matisse uses chairs in his work as in the stolen drawing, Nude in a Rocking Chair, and the painting, Interior with Yellow and Blue. He loved curves and arabesques and he used the structure of an arch-backed chair to make those, not unlike the arms of the figures in Dance I.

Strong verticals provide visual support for the "follow-the-bouncing-ball" circles, energetic lines, curved flowers, and the "follow-the-bouncing-ball" circles. If you want a smile and some nostalgia, check out the Comin' Round the Mountain 1949 cartoon on You-Tube and head to 4:10 in to get to the song. I just love that and remember singing along to others like it. So there's your pop culture reference. You can stay tuned if you are a die-hard paint fanatic.

Technical shop talk:

Color in oil painting can be very rich, a quality I wouldn't use to describe digital color; that would be better described as "vibrant". The oil painting leans more toward organic color rather than synthetic. Even within oil paints there are some considered "organic" and others "synthetic" in actual composition. Newer colors like quinicridone mageta and the pthalos are synthetic while cadmiums, olive greens, ochres, etc. are considered more organic (not in the farming sense but as more natural :). Synthetics began being made in 1935, followed by many more in the 1960's, from raw materials taken through chemical reactions. Organic pigments are made with mined ores or other earth substances (clays, mica, silicas) .

[Mayer, Ralph. The Painter's Craft. An Introduction to Artist's Methods and Materials. Revised and updated by Steven Sheehan, Director of the Ralph Mayer Center, Yale University School of Art. New York: Penquin Group. 1948. 1991. ]