Buster Levi Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Rick Brazill at 121 Main Street in Cold Spring, New York. The exhibition will run from October 4 to October 27, 2024. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Friday October 4 from 6-8 pm.
Rick Brazill has been making representational work from life for over thirty years. This winter, he decided to begin a series of abstract paintings reaching back to an earlier part of his career. After exploring numerous options that included geometric shapes to grids to organic forms, Brazill settled on a combination of images combining circular shapes and rectangles. The gestational source for these paintings is Picasso’s Harlequin of 1915 in the Museum of Modern Art. They are also influenced by the compositional structure found in still life paintings by Cezanne.
Rick Brazill, The Juggler, oil on linen. 40x30, 2024
Brazill’s work is hardly a copy of Picasso’s. He borrows the tall rectangular shape that Picasso used to represent the body of his Harlequin, however, it is it is one or one a few rectangular shapes juxtaposed among various circles. The works imply that they are interiors but one cannot be certain. If anything, they share a certain eerie mood present in the early works of Giorgio de Chirico. The series eventually evolved into an exploration of the circle shape itself culminating in a group of mandalas. They are made up of four separate panels and the staccato brushwork give them a kinetic energy.
These paintings are complex and extremely active. Although the arrangement employed through the series is similar, the paintings appear remarkably varied. Brazill employs numerous strategies within each painting. The spatial placement of the shapes shift often, never seeming to rest. There is a definite sense of transparency among some of the forms and the ground creating fluidity through the composition. The application of paint is diverse including glazed or thick layers, even flat areas to blended values that imply three dimensions. These same characteristics are evident in some larger drawings Brazill has created along with the paintings. They appear to function as studies in the ideas of the paintings as well as individual works on their own.This is a dynamic body of work that is rewarding both visually and subjectively.
Rick Brazill, Sol de Verano, oil on museum board, 40x30” 2024
Rick Brazill, Madala II, pigment and oil on canvas, 24x24”, 2024