Project Description
In curating the Beauty in Lockdown catalogue, a collection of pieces by artists represented by Nancy Toomey Fine Art, we were struck by the diversity of talent, as each artist utilizes mediums celebrating color, form, texture, and concept in their own way. Each piece exemplifies an individual artist’s practice. We invite you to take time out of your day to lose yourselves in these images, which will hopefully provide inspiration and solace. In the upcoming weeks, we will be highlighting a work by each of these artists.
This is a wonderful opportunity to explore, in depth, our artists’ fascinating inspirations and influences, and to connect more deeply with their creations. For some of you, it will mean revisiting a cherished artist’s work, perhaps someone that you have observed for a long time, and even collected. For others, we hope it will provide a delightful introduction to something or someone new that will resonate with you deeply.
We are happy to announce that 10% from the sale of any work in this catalogue will be donated to the World Health Organization, which needs our help now more than ever. We are grateful for your curiosity, your interest, and your support. Without it, the connection to creativity and the arts would not be possible.
MIYA ANDO, Gekkou (Moonlight) November 4, 2017
Pigment, Silver Leaf, Arches Paper, 45.5 x 34.5 Inches Framed
$13,000
This work on paper entitled Gekkou, the Japanese word for moonlight, continues New York based Miya Ando’s exploration of the exchange and relationship between material and the evanescent qualities of nocturnal light. Comprised of silver leaf and pigment on Arches paper, they invite the viewer to recognize the fleeting qualities of light, and of time itself… More »
JUD BERGERON, My Pal Foot Foot, 2013
Slip Cast, Hand Glazed Ceramics, 12 x 6 x 6 Inches, Open Edition
$2,000
San Francisco based Jud Bergeron has been making these works for 10 years in a variety of materials from cast bronze, cast resin with automotive paint, and now ceramics. This piece was originally part of an installation for a show whose theme was fatherhood. Foot Foot is a generic, abstracted representation of a baby. There is a Danish saying about having children, “one equals one, two equals a thousand,” and this saying was the basis for the original installation that was completed shortly after Bergeron’s second child was born… More »
CASPER BRINDLE, Nectar, 2018
Acrylic, Automotive Paint and Resin, 48 x 48 Inches
$15,500
Los Angeles based Casper Brindle pushes the expressive possibilities of color while working within his boldly established pictorial structures. Though the materials he utilizes are industrial in nature (automotive paint and resin), the way in which he applies pigment in delicate sprays allows for subtle chromatic gradations. Pairing together unusual colors results in unexpected harmonies that vibrate with radiant energy. The inherent properties of the materials Brindle uses enhance the interactive experience of viewing his work–the iridescent pigments shift and scatter light in myriad ways… More »
CLAIRE BURBRIDGE, Pollination, 2018
Pen and Ink on Arches Paper, 10 x 10 Inches Framed
$1,800
This small pen and ink study is at the root of British artist Claire Burbridge’s latest exhibition Pathways to the Invisible at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Oregon. For Burbridge, there is alway a “seed artwork” that leads to a show, and this was it. She made this drawing late last spring, sitting in nature, listening to the intense hum of bees and insects pollinating the oak tree flowers and wildflowers. A sensory piece that takes the perceived view of an insect drawn to the symbol of a flower, it also functions as a mandala more than a study of nature… More »
ERIC BUTCHER, P/R 800, 2017
Oil and Resin on Aluminum, 31.5 x 42.5 Inches
$10,000
For the past two decades, United Kingdom based Eric Butcher has developed a creative practice both reductive and rule governed. Working primarily with oil paint or graphite suspended in resin, a transparent monochrome is spread across the surface of his aluminum support and then stripped off, using a variety of metal blades drawn across the surface. This procedure is then repeated, slowly building up an accumulation of thin residues, creating tiny variations of unevenness on the edge of the blade which effect the density of paint as it is stripped away… More »
BRIAN DETTMER, Encyclopedia of All Nations, 2019
Hardcover Book, Acrylic Varnish, 11.25 x 8.75 x 2.875 Inches
$9,000
In this series by New York based Brian Dettmer, single reference books become unbound from their spine and lay flat on the wall as a rectangular machine full of compressed data. The book’s framing begins to fall apart as fragments of text, diagrams, and illustrations melt together into a single organism. The book becomes a game board, a mechanical component, or a geometric landscape of bits and bites of data. Layers of pages and chunks of information have been removed, as if deleted or erased from a hard drive. We are left with both a shell and a vessel, a geometric landscape, a device or a tool that can work to hold ideas and help solve new problems… More »
PETER HALASZ, Blue Haze, 2016
Oil on Panel, 33 x 39.5 Inches
$6,000
Los Angeles based Peter Halasz’s technique of layering glazed monochromatic colors, in both still life and portraiture, results in haunting, hallucinatory images that exist solely within their own realm. His images suggest a coming in, and moving away from, a conjured light that exists only in some half remembered dream. These psychologically charged tableaus rendered in seductive tones of ochre, petal pink, and foggy gray, set a mood where the familiar world ends and a less finite one begins. Taking his inspiration from sources as disparate as 19th century romanticism, the music of The Cure, and the Light and Space movement, the work remains distinctly his own… More »
ANDY HARPER, Untitled, 2010
Oil on Canvas, 17.75 x 21.75 Inches
$6,500
United Kingdom based Andy Harper’s original, and now abandoned, title for this piece was Double Slit, a reference to the double-slit experiment, which in modern physics is a demonstration that light and matter can display characteristics of both classically defined waves and particles. Whether conjuring a scene from a parallel botanical world, working abstractly or opening up a dialogue with an appropriated image, Harper’s method of painting is the same. A membrane of transparent paint is spread across the slippery surface of the support. Brushes and various implements are brought in contact with this sensitive and ever moveable layer of oily paint. Working in this only when wet technique provides a window of opportunity to act upon the surface… More »
MONICA LUNDY, Aurora, 2017
Coffee, Burned Paper and Charcoal on Khadi Paper, 55 x 38 Inches Unframed
$11,500
Aurora comes from the Monica Lundy exhibition Deviance – Women in the Asylum During the Fascist Regime, a rumination on the incarceration of Italian women and girls during the era of Mussolini, which was born of a year spent abroad in Rome, Italy. In this series of paintings, Lundy focuses on portraiture of inmates from the Psychiatric Hospital of Sant’Antonio Abate. She uses coffee, burned paper, and charcoal on handmade paper with a reductive hand: just as much as media is added, it is then subsequently removed, erased, or burned away… More »
CHRIS NATROP, Matrix Nouveau 2, 2017
Acrylic and Glitter on Cut Paper, 44 x 48 Inches Unframed
$4,000
Executed free-form and exclusively with a knife, Los Angeles based Chris Natrop’s process has evolved into a stream-of-consciousness drawing technique that has continued to evolve and develop. The methodical, repetitive unintentionality of his drawing process results in color-washed paper forms that appear at once ethereal and organically chaotic. Shifting forms of pattern, shadow, and silhouette intertwine to become complex, unified landscapes. Agility and innovation combine to create delicate images of flora and fauna that immerse the viewer in a world wholly imagined yet entirely specific… More »
MARIA PARK, Stack, 2018
Acrylic on Plexiglas, Mounted on High-density EPS, 36 x 30 Inches
$4,800
Maria Park’s Stack, which depicts a stack of sliced bread, refers to both data structures and to layering as an analog to the sedimentation of tacit knowledge and formal instruction. This work is part of Park’s ongoing exploration of elemental components of life in a technological society, which also includes work on the OCR-A alphabet, book titles, and on minerals, crystals, and elements from the periodic table. Her work examines ways that technology intervenes in our participation in the world, and explores human presence and agency within a media-reliant society… More »
MARK PERLMAN, Fade, 2019
Encaustic on Panel, 60 x 48 Inches Framed
$9,000
Bay Area based Mark Perlman works in the medium of encaustic: pigment mixed with hot wax, the oldest form of painting in civilization dating back to Egyptian Old Kingdom tombs. The paintings are built up layer over layer to create what the artist calls the underbelly, a luminous field of mid-tone color upon which he composes and builds his imagery. Perlman’s deep fascination with processes of change effected by time and nature’s gradual breaking down of form has developed into a profound meditation on loss and dissolution, restoration and retrieval, and the interaction between mutability and permanence… More »
GREGG RENFROW, Fantin-Latour, 2020
Polymer, Pigment on Cast Acrylic, 48 x 48 Inches
$12,000
Gregg Renfrow, based in the Bay Area, works on acrylic panels that allow light to filter through the pigment. The result is an illumination of color and form subtly projected from the surface of the work. While looking at this painting, the bands of color may appear suspended in real time and space. Renfrow achieves this discoloration, or dematerialization of the painted image, by pouring polymer over acrylic panels. He is very careful not to interrupt the runs of paint with the unpredictable effects of the human hand. The impression from the contact of carefully applied pigment and transparent support is that the process has occurred by itself through some unknown power or force… More »
MICHAEL RUSSELL, Untitled 48, 2019
Ink and Graphite on Paper, 9.625 x 11.625 Inches Framed
$2,000
Seeking to comprehend the passage of time remains a prevalent aspect of Los Angeles based Michael Russell’s work. Through drawing, he aims to expand the capacity for his own introspection, as well as for those viewing his drawings. Mark-making carried out in a linear fashion leaves behind an idiosyncratic trail; documentation of time spent. Russell views the trace of his hand less as proof of labor, and more as the intimacy of process being laid bare. Rhythm is explicit and builds up to exude stillness. Sweeping gestures are either absent, or mimed with smaller repetitive marks. Although the compositions are carefully engineered, the evolving techniques used to color them in are rudimentary… More »
BRIAN RUTENBERG, Looming Pine 6, 2018
Oil on Paper, 30 x 22.5 Inches Framed
$8,000
New York based Brian Rutenberg’s painting presents the landscape in the same way he learned to see it, by lying on his belly with his chin in the dirt, foreground so close he can taste it and background far away. No middle ground. Seeing from a bug’s-eye view instantly compresses space, like closing an accordion, and makes the viewer complicit in reconstructing the landscape; Rutenberg provides the close-up and the far away, and the viewer supplies the middle… More »
LYNDI SALES, Trying to break the cycle, 2018
Acrylic and Ink on Paper and Iridescent Foil, 29 x 18 Inches Framed
$2,800
South Africa based Lyndi Sales’s filigree cut works are inspired by shattered glass experiments, as well as net-like structures that occur in nature. Painting with clear water, and then carefully dropping India ink into the painted area, provides a process of surrender with the outcome always uncontrollable. That surrender for Sales encompasses a letting go of personality traits, our physical bodies, and any knowledge of what the future may bring… More »
CAROLE SILVERSTEIN, these languages of reverence, 2018
Acrylic Ink on Mylar, 48 x 36 Inches
$12,500
In this painting by Los Angeles based Carole Silverstein, a multiplicity of cultural ornamentations coalesce and collide to weave shifting perspectives and ambiguous spatial perceptions. Star interlaces and diamond labyrinth patterns derive from such sources as Leonardo Da Vinci, Islam, Morocco, Persia, and then within the Japanese isometric perspective known as blown-away roof style, taken from a 12th century handscroll of The Tale of Genji. While exploring the symbolism of the ornamentation and the spatial play, she seeks to elevate the feminine and a connection to the divine… More »
GILLES TEBOUL, Untitled 2047, 2017
Acrylic and Resin on Canvas, 19.7 x 15.7 Inches
$3,500
The work of Paris based Gilles Teboul is a perfect hybridization of elements as diverse as the minimalist aesthetic of artists such as John McCracken and Dan Flavin, and the delicate shading and fluorescent colors of the OS X. His ordered, shiny, lacquered paintings are composed of pigments bonded together by an acrylic resin which is absorbed into the canvas for many hours. Balanced on a flat plane, Teboul pours on paint which spreads over the surface without his intervention… More »
RAY TURNER, White Squall, 2014
Oil on Canvas, 44.5 x 45 Inches
$20,000
Inspired by the 19th century American romantic landscape painters and their quest for the sublime, Ray Turner explores man’s domination of nature or absence from it as if both occupied a dimension beyond the constraints of time and space. His paintings become metaphors for the voyage that moves us through life, while the scenes they depict exist in a state of suspended animation, poised in a balance of poetic tensions signifying the cosmic conflict of the ephemeral versus permanence… More »
AUDREY TULIMIERO WELCH, Holus Bolus (All at Once), 2018
Acrylic On Canvas, 42 x 48 Inches
$7,500
Audrey Tulimiero Welch’s abstracted layered paintings can be read as a metaphoric map that contains, in its embedded layers, personal stories and lived relationships of daily life. Holus Bolus has a unique genesis. In the fall of 2017, during an open studios event, Welch invited the public to collaborate with her on this painting. She selected three specific maps and had them available to transfer on the surface with a gel medium transfer technique. On the side of the painting, in pencil are written the names of her collaborators. The choice of maps coincided with two significant events, one personal and one global: she and her family had recently returned to the United States after living fifteen years abroad, and the Nigerian refugee crisis was in full swing. The maps selected included a topographical of her new hometown Tacoma, and the broad lines intersecting the picture plane in this painting was sourced from a map that traced the walking routes of Nigerian refugees traveling on foot from Niger to the Cameroon border… More »
SUZAN WOODRUFF, Properties of Heat III, 2016
Acrylic on Acrylic Panel, 24 x 22 Inches
$5,000
With a method of controlled chaos, Los Angeles based Suzan Woodruff paints works that depict natural occurrences, from the molecular to interstellar phenomena. Using gravity, pigment, viscosity and evaporation, she re-creates nature within her ethereal acrylic color explorations. The iridescent shimmering surfaces are a result of her studio practice; a rigorous physical process involving constant motion that keeps her open to the “visitations and apparitions” that inform the end result. The work can resemble patterns of the earth as seen from space, or the smallest cosmic eruption at the cellular level… More »