David Rohn, Color Study 3 for Big Still Life, 1980

DAVID ROHN

Watercolors

April 27 – June 9, 2019
Opening: Saturday, April 27, 5-7pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 18, 5pm

In 1953, I was the kid who was good at drawing, actually one of three in eighth grade. I did airplanes. After hundreds of airplanes, then dozens of cartoons, I was introduced to looking at paintings. I began to learn about the language of visual art: not depiction, but the secret language—form, color, symmetry, rhythm. This felt fundamental. I thought I might give it a go.

There are other secret languages in art, of course, including some I don’t quite grasp. Art, done well, is a way of twanging the mind, and the mind is infinitely resonant. Who knows what’s coming next? For me it’s mainly the classical ideas of form/color/architecture, plus the paradox of 3-D on a 2-D surface that Cézanne calls attention to.

Working from observation offers an endless variety of visual situations and has the bonus of requiring prolonged intimate contact with plain stuff—a jar, an apple. I begin by gathering in. I yield to it. Later I play with what I have harvested, engaging a dialogue between the parts.

Sometimes a dynamic equilibrium results—a perpetually self-charging energy source. That’s the goal.