Art of the Peculiar, the Creepy and the Unfamiliar: February 2014

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Suzan Frecon : paper

Suzan Frecon is an abstract painter who works with line and geometric shape using fluid, monochrome washes. She is critically acclaimed for her sensitive arrangement of color, form, and texture and for the philosophical resonance of her art. Her works are composed with subtle, interacting arrangements of color - usually earth toned - and which are applied with meticulous attention to the physical qualities of paint. Each work is the result of a thoughtful, laborious process in which the artist sketches and revises a composition, usually evolved from previous works. She then executes a "plan" rooted in geometric and volumetric calculations and precisely defined spatial relationships. She proceeds gradually, guided by intuition; the result is a complex amalgamation of preparation and instinct, order and chance. Pictorial associations are never intentional, and Frecon refuses to imbue her paintings with symbolic undertones.Her almost tactile use of color heightens the visual experience of her work, and depending on the light source and viewing angle, different perceptions emerge. Her forms change from positive to negative, and colors and surfaces vary in terms of density and reflexivity.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Daguerreotypes Spur Book on John Dillwyn Llewelyn

This story begins in 1973 with a man in Wales tidying up the mess in his garage and discovering a box of daguerreotypes. Uncertain whether to throw it out, he waited until his brother-in law asked advice from a friend who was a photographer and documentary filmmaker. The friend, Noel Chanan, strongly advised him to hold tight onto a box that must be brimful of history.

And so it proved. The box held 30 or 40 family images from the early 1840s by John Dillwyn Llewelyn, an amateur scientist and pioneering British photographer; the man who owned that box, and his sister, were Llewelyn’s great-great-grandchildren. Mr. Chanan has now written a book, the first major showing of Llewelyn’s work for a wide public since the mid-19th century.

Read more here.