Author: Steve Rockwell

by Jonathan Goodman

Alvin Roy, a painter of considerable gifts, was born and raised in Houston during the Civil Rights era. He studied first at the Houston Technical Institute, then moved to New York City to further his studies at Pratt Institute. Toward the end of the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the Marines. This decision provided him with the chance to travel and experience other cultures. In Okinawa, Roy studied watercolor techniques with a local master, also internalizing the recognition that the spiritual life of an object is as important as the formal attributes it consists of. Roy has remained in Houston for more than forty years now, using mixed-media assemblage to create bas-relief wall pieces. Jazz, an important influence, occurs in his work in the form of saxophones, keyboards, and colorful patterns that reflect the texture of the music. Roy also turns to Egyptian culture, imaging pharaohs and, also, figures of ancient spiritual archetypes. Most recently, Roy has resorted to mixed-media techniques and collage on paper to explore the quilting tradition in the southern United States and to address the history of the Underground Railroad.

Roy’s formidable energy is evident from the start. His work, at first glance, looks entirely abstract, but the reliefs are more truly described as a mixture of abstract and figurative influences. His recent series, “Talking Heads,” regularly includes white vertical bars, decorated randomly, that divide the large painterly field occurring behind them. Color is important in its own right, but oneiric forms are also found. Eyes, noses, mouths, and, every so often, a full figure can be found in these complex assemblages of abstract shapes, often pieced together as one would find in a quilt. Roy’s colors also are unusually strong; they are dense, often dark, and luminous, as if rising from the night in a dream. His talents are such that he has found a way of connecting with history and culture more by implication rather than by direct illustration. His multi-cultural approach, evident in the combination of forms, materials, and allusions, make him a national artist of note—even when his inspiration is deeply personal.

Perhaps the most accomplished element in Roy’s work is his ability to create intricate genres: partly non objective, partly figurative; both sculptural and representational; and measured and free. In many ways, this is the manner in which an innovative exploratory artist works—by merging genres, images, and materials. In Roy’s case, such combinations are made stronger by the framework of history, as well as references to the ancient art of Egypt. We are living in a time of unusual eclecticism, and Roy’s composite efforts make wonderful use of the old and the new. Certainly, the work’s overall impression tends to be one of colorful abstraction, but recognizable figurative elements, sometimes partially hidden by the overall pattern of the paint, also make their way into Roy’s art. One instinctively feels that his historical references structure and deepen the paintings’ ability to communicate. It is not easy to find such a successful mix of histories, and patterns informed by those stories, in works that convey a visionary point of view. Alvin Roy’s work can be viewed in a virtual gallery at:

https://bit.ly/ccapalroyex

by Anne Leith

Forethought: Last Paintings of Nature, is the title of Saul Acevedo Gomez’s recent installation at Swivel Saugerties. The title references Magritte’s painting ‘Forethought’, depicting a tree branching out with a curious group of diverse flower varieties, and like Magritte, Gomez’s work is a layered puzzle of ideas and images, including what Magritte called ‘language games’. Gomez’s subject matter is nature, but not depicted in a naturalistic way – he creates drawings of rooms with artwork and text, such as canvases leaning face towards the walls, childlike depictions of trees and flowers on strips of paper, personal notes, references to other artists and writers, and cryptic commentary. These drawings reflect on how we are failing in our attempts to keep the planet healthy – and to the anxiety that provokes – perhaps due to a lack of forethought?

Forethought: Last Paintings of Nature was situated in a small bank vault room, ‘The Safe’. The installation included tiled floors that match those in the drawings, which enhanced the effect of entering into a claustrophobic diorama of ideas. The enclosed space of The Safe, with its echo chamber of sound was the perfect setting for creating a deliberate sense of unease, with the implication that ‘nature’ is now a precious commodity that is locked away in a man-made vault for safe keeping.

Each drawing is an exploration of ideas, deliberately hidden and ambiguous, with canvases leaning against the walls, the front side unseen. The interiors walls of these ‘rooms’ are layered with repeated childlike drawings of trees and flowers and hand-drawn wood grain, creating an attractive decorative space then subverted by scrawled dystopic messages. Text and titles such as Don’t Worry We Got Art, How To Be At Peace With Nature, and Sit and Meditate The Fire Is Coming pointedly undermines any sense of comfort or simple pleasure in the images. One example is Find Me If You Are Feeling Anxious, which includes a drawn computer link to search for How To Enjoy this Moment and the back of a canvas roughly drawn with the text I Hope You Start Panicking Today.

Gomez creates a matrix of illusion in these poetic works, connecting art, nature, and the internet – complex yet refreshingly clear with well-thought-out ideas. His drawn link motif to internet searches such as How Can I Experience Nature emphasizes the non-experiential way we interact today with the nature around us – as do the canvases leaning against the wall – another level of separation from truly seeing what is going on.

This intriguing show is layered with meaning, and handsomely offers up a troubling look at one artist’s view of the state of man/nature/art and the ideas surrounding their interface today.

Saul Acevedo Gomez: Forethought: Last Paintings of Nature, Swivel Saugerties, Safe Room Project, 258 Main Street, Saugerties, NY 12477 November 12 – December 11, 2022

On the occasion of his exhibition, Dark Color Wheel Paintings at the David Richard Gallery in New York, John Mendelsohn asks and answers his own questions about his work. The twelve paintings in the series were made in 2022.

Why an interview in this form?
Autofiction, Autoeroticism, Auto Interview!

How did you do these paintings?
To misquote the sportswriter Red Smith, “There’s nothing to it. All I do is starting working and open a vein.”

I mean your technique – do you use mechanical devices for making the circles and projecting rays?
No mechanical devices, no taping, everything by hand. Just the radical act of painting on canvas.

Why the title Dark Color Wheel paintings?
They follow my Color Wheel series that were exhibited at the David Richard Gallery in 2021. Like the earlier series, they have discs with color projecting from their centers. The form suggests a color wheel, a device that shows color relationships.

In contrast to the earlier series, the new paintings have a wider range of colors, deeper tonalities, and lower saturation hues that play off against exuberant, purer hues. Sequences of primary colors contrast with unexpected juxtapositions, that devolve into tinted grays and blacks. For me, color in these paintings is lyrical, astringent, and ultimately mysterious.

What was the origin of these paintings?
Success has many mothers. To quote myself, speaking about the impetus for these paintings, “The first was a dream I has as a child, a wonderful dream, in which I entered a golden chamber with turning golden wheels, like a clockwork’s interior. Second, there was a visit to the hospital to visit a friend who was at the end of his life. He said to us that he saw spinning discs, but that only he could see them, not us. Third, while conducting an art workshop at a senior center, I was teaching a participant how to paint flowers with dark centers.”

How about your feelings at the start of this series of paintings?
A poetic motive for the paintings was the phrase “a song of flowering and fading”, conjured up by the paintings’ radiating forms, that suggested a way to consider the splendor and shadow pervading everything.

Can you say something about how these paintings developed within the series?
The paintings began with richly colored works that are quite dark in tonality. The chromatics start to change, with some really surprising and at times disturbing sequences of hues. There are then a number of softly atmospheric paintings. They give way to the final group of works, with strong contrasts of tinted blacks and a cold, blazing light.

These paintings have a particular mood. Do you agree?
I would say a spectrum of moods. The persistence of light against encroaching darkness constitutes one of the central motifs in these works. It helps to evoke these paintings’ moods: an unstable mixture of melancholy and brightness – a sense of inevitable waning consorting with beauty that is a fugitive, saving grace.

The discs and rays suggest many associations beyond color wheels: flower forms, the movement of time, the wheel of life, the piercing appearance of the miraculous in the everyday.

What about the style of these paintings – how would you describe it.
I wouldn’t. I would say that in the context of these abstract works, illusionistic possibilities had arisen, unbidden. These include a painterly, representational quality, a sense of space, and the impression of emanating and reflective light. As is my practice, I allow rather than censor.

Do you recognize precedents for this work?
Of course. I’ll let the art historians have a crack at this, but … “No Caravaggio, no Delaunays, no Stella – no Dark Color Wheel paintings.”

I notice that from series to series your paintings really change – why?
At one point in the past, I would say that I was restless. At another point, I would say, there is no need to choose one approach. Now I am inclined to say that I’m guided to the next thing, which can be more closely or more distantly related. After doing this for quite a while now, some patterns of thought emerge, but so do more mysteries.

What do you think that these paintings can give a viewer?
Their je ne sais quoi – literally, “I do not know what”, says it all. That is, paintings can have an ineffable quality; it enables distinctive experiences – entrancing, unsettling, moving.

What do you think about what people have written about your work?
Let them knock themselves out. Among the comments: formalist, whimsical, strategic, romantic, failed minimalist — the last I especially appreciated. Since I occasionally write about art, I know that it is fairly impossible.