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by Frank
Priscaro
Fred Gibbons takes a
minimalist approach to the act of painting. He’d just as soon set up
his easel on a street corner with a handful of paints and work at
capturing what he’s seeing, without a lot of fanfare or preparation.
(He keeps some painting supplies in his car, for just such an
occasion, and uses relatively few colors, a holdover from the early
influence of one of his teachers, Hope Stevenson.) His subjects
aren’t grand, either. Rather than expansive landscapes or large
scale abstracts, he just paints what happens to be right in front of
him. Early morning sunlight on the hood of an old car. A homeless
man next to a display of oranges in front of a supermarket. A woman
hanging her laundry in the afternoon sun. Things we’ve all seen but
probably didn’t notice. And he doesn’t take a lot of time about it,
either. Counting Kim English and his “fast painting” philosophy as
another of his influences, he works quickly, because as he says, the
shadows change too quickly. All in all, he approaches his work with
a common man’s sensibility for his craft and its importance,
refreshingly devoid of the pseudo-sophistication that seems to
plague so many artists in explaining what it is, exactly, they
do.
But the resulting paintings
are a different story all together: They are anything but
minimalist. They are full of the depth of shadow, the play of
sunlight, the vibrancy of color, the definition and elevation of
form, the ordinary made extraordinary. They’re full of light and
life. |
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Fly Fishing Boots Hung in the Garage
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Gibbons talks about his
work in characteristically modest terms. “I’m a street painter,” he
says, “I just paint what I see walking around.” And while that may
be true, it does not capture everything he strives to put into his
work. The patterns of light and shadow, how the light falls across
things, how everyday objects take on a particular glow. That magic,
he maintains, is in “simplifying what I see, finding what to leave
in, what to leave out, and leaving some room for
interpretation.
In his body of work, you
can see influences of some of the Masters: Hopper and Van Gogh, and
early on in his study of painting, when the weather was bad, he
would copy their works. That, as he found, was not as easy as one
would think. “You can copy these great works, make the same kinds of
brush strokes, use the same colors, and yet, when all is said and
done, it’s not the same. It’s like solving a math problem by just
copying the proof. It may be a good copy, but there’s something
missing. That quality is what I strive to put into my
paintings.” |
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Menhaunt Yacht Club in Snow
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“The same goes for painting
a scene from life,” he continues. “You can’t just paint what’s
there. I mean, you can, but it’s not very interesting. You have to
paint what you see, your interpretation of what’s in front of you,
and even your feelings about it. All the different colors in the
sunlight on a white sheet, for instance.” In this way, Fred Gibbons
uses what he sees as reference, not as the final product. And it’s
this transformation that gives his paintings their presence and
their appeal. That transformation is going on in the Gibbons
himself, he maintains. “A lot of this is about what I can learn by
doing this. It’s a process, a kind of sport, to see if I can pull
off this or that particular painting. It’s a constant learning
process for me.”
Gibbon, in his typically
understated way, doesn’t make too much of his paintings. “I enjoy it
when someone likes one of my paintings enough to buy it. But I’m not
in this for the money. I much rather create something people can
look at find some pleasure in, something that they can put a little
of themselves into.” That’s just the way he is. A minimalist. With
paintings that are anything but. |
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