Pat Steir

Pat Steir

Nothing, 1974, oil on canvas

August Waterfall, 2000, photogravure and aquatint

Pat Steir is a painter and printmaker who works with abstracted landscapes.

Formally, she works on a large scale and frequently uses silver, gold, white, and Paynes gray. She puts X's through things which implies a theme of destruction. She says she wanted to destroy images as symbols and that no imagery was the same as endless imagery.

In her waterfall paintings, she pours paint on canvas and allows colors to mix and merge (a wet on wet technique). In her colored abstract paintings, the colors correspond with 5 Buddha families. In fact a lot of her paintings are representative of her interest in Asian, specifically Chinese, art. (The act of paint flowing corresponds to the philosophy of Daoism.)

Jumaldi Alfi

Jumaldi Alfi

Footnote #4 (Blackboard painting), 2012, acrylic and oil bar on canvas

Renewal/Verjungung Series 2-B, 2009, acrylic on canvas

Jumaldi Alfi surprisingly removes his art from socio-political themes in favor of formal elements. He identifies as an Indonesian artist. His background as a poet is evident in his work (through use of text and subject matter). His work is about naivity and minimalism.

Formally, he uses color, line, texture, and meaningless doodles in his compositions. Text is present in nearly all the ones I've seen and sometimes is even the sole subject. Skulls are a very common theme in his work bringing to mind death and decay.

chalkboard paintings reminiscent of Cy Twombly.

Allison Miller

Allison Miller

Wave, 2003, oil and acrylic on canvas

Repeater, 2013, oil and acrylic on canvas

Allison Miller is an abstract artist who includes unique materials like dirt into her oil, acrylic, and pencil works. She combines linear mark-making with abstractions. Her pieces use bright colors, bold forms, and heavy textures. Her line work has been described as a gravity-defying 3D sculptural effect. Formally, she is deliberately inconsistent but in a way that does not evoke collage.

Black is consistently dominant in her paintings. Other colors are drab and institutional with bright colors peeking through.

She explores new territories while she paints and doesn't like to talk about her work. One of her preoccupations is figure-ground relationship. Her use of depth and layers cause viewers to question what they're supposed to be looking at.

Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander

Mirror Plane, 2012

Shahzia Sikander likes the idea of exhausting an image. Sikander creates stimulating visual experiences for her audience through the addition of modern and non-traditional elements by forcing the viewer to reconcile conflicting sensibilities hidden within beautifully rendered landscapes as well as offering a wide range of stimuli from the traditional Muslim world to popular Western culture, such as mandalas, airplanes and cowboy boots and soccer balls. 

For her subjects, she mixes personal and historical experiences such as reading the Qu'ran. She seeks to subvert Eastern stereotypes through her work.

She is very skilled in Indo-Persian miniature painting technique and formal practice.  She frequently uses repetitive shapes to represent movement. In the one above, she uses the same shape repetition for the hair and the flight of birds, which is really cool. She does a lot of performance-based installations to further get her concept across.

Art 21 video

Jim Nutt

Jim Nutt

Coursing, 1966, acrylic and collage on plexiglas

Trim, 2010, acrylic on linen

Jim Nutt is a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as Chicago Imagists, or Hairy Who. His pop culture influence is evident in his work. He often paints fantasy, characters, and political commentary.

In his portraits, he paints expectations of faces instead of actual faces.  His faces could be compared to that which a child would draw. He uses mixed media and collage. They could be classified as cartoon versions of people, kind of remind me of Ren and Stimpy. His flat areas of color bring to mind digital versions of paintings.

The shapes of his figures could be compared to John Currin.

These two paintings have over a 40 year span but elements of distortion and strange shapes remain constant.

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly

Red Painting, 1961, oil, crayon, and pencil on canvas

Untitled, 1968, house paint and crayon on canvas

Cy Twombly evaded the dominant styles of the time: Pop, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism in favor of his large-scale, calligraphic, graffiti-style paintings.

He works in mixed media: sprayed graffiti-like paint on solid fields of gray, white, or tan. They appear to have been scribbled by a child.

His influences of each individual work are suggested in the titles. He sites the lines and smudges as the subjects of the paintings. He paints with cultural memory and sometimes evokes landscapes through use of color.

During the 1960s, his exhibitions were negatively received; people said their kid could paint that. His later works have been categorized into Romantic Symbolism.

Tomory Dodge

Tomory Dodge

Mar-Eye-Ah, 2010, oil on canvas

Weekend, 2005, oil on canvas

Tomory Dodge uses a variety of approaches to painting on a single surface. He wants to emphasize the immediate experience of painting via abstraction.

Some of his pieces appear to be smudges and lines in somewhat of a Cubist fashion, although others have a clear representational subject. His strong use of color and line suggest energy and movement.

He chooses not to fit into a preconceived notion of painting and has a hard time accepting the last marks as the last. He can be classified as an abstract artist who challenges representation with his unusual and energetic painting style.