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.

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.

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.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Requiem, White Roses, and Butterflies, 2008

spin painting, 1995

Damien Hirst is internationally renowned for his sculptural works but also creates well-known paintings! He shows immense influence of Francis Bacon. His first painting show received one of the worst critical responses ever. It was called "shockingly bad" and "first year art student".

He does spot paintings, which are just colored spots on walls, boards, and canvas. Also spin paintings, which are just SPIN ART that you can buy at Michaels. These can both be categorized as non-representational.

In his other works, he uses dark colors and deep shadows, referencing the popular themes of death and theatricality.