Color Field and Abstraction: Brushed, Stained and Sprayed Paintings

David Eichholtz
May 6
3 min read

Nancy Genn

Celestial Space 3

1964

Oil on canvas

52 x 60"

Color Field and Abstraction:

Brushed, Stained and Sprayed Paintings

Thomas Downing

Nancy Genn

George Hofmann

Matsumi Kanemitsu

James Kelly

Ronnie Landfield

Howard Mehring

Lester Rapaport

Martha Szabo

Ben Woolfitt

May 6 through June 14, 2025

An Online Exhibition

Thomas Downing

Bush

1960 ca

Acrylic on canvas

51 x 38"

This presentation focuses on color and abstraction, but more specifically on the artist’s processes for delivering the color. In most cases, each artist uses and selects color as all or an integral part of the content of their compositions, while the process sets the mood and conveys the intent. Ten artists and 25 of their paintings from 1960 through 2023 are included in the exhibition.

Nancy Genn’s painting from 1964 is a classic work from her earlier period with radiant colors, hints of the most perfect lavender, then effortlessly and perfectly layered with brush marks that seem calligraphic. The marks provide movement and energy that unifies the composition and almost hint at a story.

Martha Szabo

Cityscape, Orange Sunrise Against Lavender, Yellow Sky

1976

Oil on canvas

8 x 10"

The early 1960s painting from Thomas Downing has short wide strokes of layered color and radiating light that conveys warmth and energy. In contrast, Martha Szabo uses large swaths of colors melding from cool lavenders to radiant ochers and yellows through an orange glowing orb to covey the break of day through a surreal rooftop setting in New York City where skyscrapers in the distance and nearer chimneys with spires of smoke are anthropomorphic and suggest dancing figures at dawn.

Howard Mehring

Untitled (Summer)

1962

Acrylic and canvas collage on canvas

43.2 x 44"

Howard Mehring creates large blocks of color in concentric quadrants of collaged stained canvas. While the composition is geometric, the artist applies the hues with a mottled process that give the blocks of color spatial depth, combined with the concentric layers there is an illusion of overlapping planes. George Hofmann also layers large passages of translucent colors built up in an organic process. Hofmann’s paintings are inspired by nature and place from the artist’s memory. Thus, the palettes and process render more of a mood and emotional experience.

James Kelly

Taxi

1962

Oil on canvas

76.5 x 65"

Framed size - 80" x 68.25"

Signed lower right-hand side

James Kelly and Lester Rapaport both use bold color palettes and a combination of shapes. The shapes in Kelly’s paintings range from brushy frenetic unbound expressionistic strokes next to flatter, almost hard-edge shapes of saturated hues ranging from curved to geometric. The result is a narrative woven through color and form. Rapaport sprays his colors on the canvas supports to convey ethereal moody layers of color and shapes with a focal point of fluid colors that run down the canvas and drip off the edge. The result is meditative compositions that evoke in viewers a range of joyous to sad memories and emotions.

Ben Woolfitt

Power of Light

2023

Acrylic on canvas

60 x 72"

Ben Woolfitt uses a process of layering colors and medium additives such as gels with different types of pigments from interference to metallic sprays and leaf to build his surfaces and allow color to radiate and move through his paintings emulating breaking light.

George Hofmann

Blue In

2008

Acrylic on linen

40 x 32"

Matsumi Kanemitsu

Pacific Series #23

1981

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 48

Ronnie Landfield and Matsumi Kanemitsu are both inspired by nature and use combinations of staining techniques and layering color to convey the energy during sunrise and sunset, or waxing and waning moons, and the ocean tides. Their palettes indicate whether the subject is water or land, day or night, bliss or pandemonium.