Dubrow’s new Bleecker Playground series re-imagine the pastoral tradition as he continues his two decade-long pictorial investigation of contemporary urban life. These paintings are free-associated in the studio, from onsite notes and the artist’s memory of the motif, without the use of photograp... Read more
Dubrow’s new Bleecker Playground series re-imagine the pastoral tradition as he continues his two decade-long pictorial investigation of contemporary urban life. These paintings are free-associated in the studio, from onsite notes and the artist’s memory of the motif, without the use of photography. Developed over a period of many months, sometimes years, the compositions are in flux until their completion. This shaping and re-shaping of structural space over a protracted period turn time into an integral element of the paintings; the surfaces seem to hold the memory of the history of their making. Likewise, the physical weight of those surfaces takes on a presence all its own.
Unlike the playground paintings, the six portraits (including the painters William Bailey and Ruth Miller and the poet Mark Strand) are painted under highly pressurized conditions and are not amalgams of multiple experiences. They are orchestrated compositions which demand specific resolutions. The character of each sitter is as essential as the character of his or her environment, as well as the connection between the two. Each of the portraits requires a season of sittings, sometimes upwards of twenty; but, like the cityscape paintings, each is resolved in the studio as it becomes, paradoxically, both more simplified and more specific.
