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.)

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.

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.

Rosy Keyser

Rosy Keyser

A Blind Torpedo Walks Into a Bar, 2013, raffia, enamel, glass, wood, and basket

Saturday Nite Special, 2013, enamel, oil, and rope on canvas

Rosy Keyser can be classified as an abstract painter, although I might think she's more non-representational? She works beyond her medium's natural habitats by including materials derived from upstate New York like corrugated steel, beer cans, sawdust, and tarps. In fact some of her "paintings" appear to just be collages of materials and not paintings at all.

Her use of unusual materials seems to be about exploration and place.

Tal R.

Tal R.

Victory Over the Sun, 2000, oil on canvas

Sisters of Kolbojnik, 2002, oil on canvas

Tal R. represents what is at front and back of the mind in conjunction with the bodily and the emotional. He shows melancholy and ecstatic states of transformation. He describes painting as a lunchbox. Subject matter includes imaginary pastoral scenes, primitivism, and patterns to convey a generosity of spirit and joy!

Colors are off, broken, or dense. Paintings exhibit spatial realization through a dynamic horizontal field. He uses collage, pencil, and oil in a variety of techniques (splatter, drip, brushstrokes, etc.)

Uses images from pop culture, and his cultural works are narrative.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown

Performance, 1999, oil on linen

Skulldiver III (Flightmask)

Cecily Brown's works ARE representational, although at first glance appear to be sloppy Rorschach-like ink blobs. Her paintings have been linked to Abstract Expressionism.

She creates expressive oil paintings of slippery body parts entwined, engorged, and ecstatic that form kaleidoscopically in the mind. She rides the line of abstraction, figuration, and pornographic abandon.

Her subject matter mainly centers around sexual pleasure, often public acts. She makes viewers question what they see by hiding her images in lavish folds of oil paint.

Pia Fries

Pia Fries

Pia Fries' work results from a conceptual and aesthetic wrestling match with Modernist painting.

She uses palette knives, spatulas, brushes, syringes and other instruments in a variety of applications on heavily primed wood panel. Her use of color is daring and inventive. She creates visual music with graceful swooshes, ethereal spills, muscular swipes, and awkward smears.

Stylistically, Fries blurs the line between painting and sculpture. Conceptually, she is interested in process painting and painting as a verb.

Lesley Vance

Lesley Vance

Untitled, 2012, oil on linen

Untitled, 2012, oil on linen

Lesley Vance has a highly personal and contemporary approach to painting, revisiting the traditional genre of still life in the form of exquisite abstraction.

She creates self-made objects as source material for her luminous shapes against darkened backgrounds. She uses oil on linen and watercolors. Her wet-on-wet technique is visually interesting.

Her work could appear non-representational but I see figures in some of her paintings - proof that the viewer determines the subject.

Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman speaks of painting as a physicality, like an extension of her arm. She believes honesty is the most important quality in a painting.

She uses richly complicated textures and colors (although with limited palettes). She uses gesture, color, and drawing-based procedures to imply femininity, performativity, and humor.

Dana Schutz

Dana Schutz

Death Comes To Us All, 2003, oil on canvas

Twister Mat, 2003, oil on canvas

Dana Schutz's work has been described as teetering on the edge of tradition and innovation.

Still lifes become personified, portraits become events, and landscapes become constructions. She embraces the area in which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive. She works with themes of death and discomfort.

She paints in thick impasto with heavy line work, deep colors, and dark shadows.

After looking at a variety of her work, I think she addresses reality in a very illogical, surrealist way.

Albert Oehlen

Albert Oehlen

Piece, 2003, oil on canvas

Mirage of Steel, 2003, oil on canvas

Albert Oehlen's paintings are neither beautiful nor seductive. Their self-consciously brutal surfaces seem to be corrupted from within, a perversion of the paintings they might have been. Link to Saatchi Gallery. 

He combines aspects of figural sexuality, mechanical distance, and painterly abstraction. It is possible to find representations of objects or figures in his mostly-abstracted works, although he exposes the limitations of both.

Formally, puddles and washes convey a refracted, dreamlike sensibility. He plays with depth perception and foreground/background relationship. Some of his compositions seem rushed and crowded, while others seem discouragingly bare.

Other works not shown here are mixed media on panel, inkjet prints, and collaborative works with other artists.

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu

Dispersion, 2002, ink and acrylic on canvas

Julie Mehretu's work combines aspects of cartography, architectural drawing, urban planning, and abstract painting. She creates energetic compositions with interesting lines and colored planes. Her art has been called animated urbanscapes.

She layers materials like Mylar, vellum, and semi-transparent paper. In addition to painting directly, she sprays acrylic medium with an airbrush.

Rather than classical renderings of environments, she presents them in unexpected ways, sometimes symbolizing not real space.

Her work has been discussed in terms of globalism: each individual layer can represent views and perspectives.

Karin Davie

Karin Davie

In Out In Out #5 and #6 (diptych), 1992, oil on canvas

Slip-Up, 1998, oil on canvas

Karin Davie is known for her Modernist striped and looping hyperbolic abstractions. Her process can be viewed in context with painting as performance.

Her paintings are constructed from repetitive physical movements. She works in large scale with bright colors.  Line and color are strongly emphasized.

She has been linked to/compared to Pop art, Op art, and Abstract Expressionism.

Gregory Amenoff

Gregory Amenoff

Cirque, 2006, oil on panel

Riversea IV, 1999, oil on canvas

Gregory Amenoff paints light and the emotional atmosphere of light. He derives from landscapes and juxtaposes oppositional worlds. He can be described as an abstract artist whose lines are energetic and sweeping.

His works evokes elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. (The two seen here have lightning bolts and waves). Formally, he works with rich surfaces and thick paint handling. His colors are deep and contrasty. His compositions are often unbalanced and unsettling.

Merlin Carpenter

Merlin Carpenter

from The Opening, 2009

Nigel, 2003

Merlin Carpenter uses a critical appropriation of painting strategies to challenge the history of late Modernism. He also challenges figure vs ground relationships with his disconnected backgrounds.
Some of his early work features abstract gestural figures - women standing in front of non representational backgrounds.
Actually his works vary quite a bit which makes his style hard to classify. (see huge variety in examples above) I am mostly interested in his most recent works like The Opening, in which he did all the "paintings" at the opening reception.

He is pretty involved in the DIY scene and started his own self-financing collective artist-run space in London.

Jane Callister

Jane Callister

Yellow Falls, 2005, acrylic on paper

Jane Callister challenges notions of representation through her unique paint application process. Rather than painting onto the canvas, she pours and drips paint and other materials. In addition to questions of abstraction vs representation, she also challenges figure vs ground, color vs line, content vs form, and personal vs political.

Visually they include hard-edged drips, lacy stalagtites, and melted ice cream colors.

Her earlier works include representations of human bodies, but in her more recent works they are only implied. Now, she includes off-the-wall additions to her canvases.