PRESS RELEASE………………………………..FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RECENT PAINTINGS
September 7th through October 13th, 2007
The title of Matt Blackwell’s exhibition of paintings intimates to us that he alludes to a time when rural America was striving to have its own voice, to dance to its own music, and to make its own entertainment. His subject is the old weird America of community; hucksters, prophets, hustlers, free thinkers and devout farmers: the great non-homogenized days of a fast fading past.
Blackwell portrays his vision of this America in his own uncompromisingly direct way. At times raw, spontaneous, funny, tragic, vitriolic and absurd, he poignantly shows an Arcadian world intruded upon and formed by the twists and turns of fate and the vicissitudes of governmental policies and wartime economics.
The artist searches for moments of reverie and respite, affection and affirmation of the spirit in mythic figures. Often inspired by and incorporating song lyrics from Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and beyond, in the body of his paintings he depicts the communal fabric of life and its surreal accompaniment.
The artist uses paint as a living entity allowing its properties, intentional and accidental, to give themselves over to images that in themselves mutate in interactions of pleasure and pain. Intimate passages are contrasted with violent gestures and vivid coloration, beauty with the caustic: rusted cars, country folk, trailers, bears and other beasts with the occasional visit to the city cousins. The time and place is now and the old weird America is anew.
Matthew Blackwell has lived in Maine, New York State and Brooklyn. This is his second solo exhibition with the Edward Thorp Gallery. The exhibition will consist of approximately fourteen recent paintings, mixed media on canvas.
Gallery hours are from 11am to 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. For more information or visuals, please call or email: [email protected].