Stanley Lewis
As a painter, I often look straight down at the grass and say that I am going to paint every blade of grass. How it is done is impossible to understand, but it starts at the micro level. ~ Stanley Lewis, 2022
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open an exhibition of new work by Stanley Lewis. This will be the artist’s fourth show with the Gallery, located at 15 Rivington Street. The artist will be present for an opening reception on Thursday, May 12 from 6-8 PM.
The exhibition is comprised of twelve paintings and four works on paper, all completed recently. Typically, Lewis works and reworks a painting or a drawing for months, if not years, struggling to grasp the details or “the little things.” He works on-site, therefore his subjects are wherever he finds himself: Westport, CT where one of his children live, Lovell Lake, NH where they have a cottage, and most particularly, during the past three years, at home in Massachusetts, painting Rhododendrons, clapboards on the house or whatever is in the backyard.
Backyard with a Wagon, Table and Chair, 2022 is a major undertaking which Stanley refers to as his “whole life.” He worked on it for thirteen years, leaving it sheltered in his outdoor ‘studio’ throughout the winter months. His method is complex and requires hours of editing: the canvas is cut and rejoined, piled with layers of paper and canvas, unified by an active painted surface and single image. Lewis’ ambitious cut-and-assemble process is also evident in his works on paper. In View of Our House with Rhododendrons, the foreground is a tangled net of individual branches, almost in relief, through which peeks a corner of the house.
Stanley Lewis was born in Somerville, NJ in 1941. He received a BA from Wesleyan University in 1963 and an MFA from Yale University in 1967 as a Danforth Fellow. Throughout his career, Lewis has held posts as teacher and critic at various institutions including Kansas City Art Institute, Smith College, and American University. In 2005, Lewis received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2015 he received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work can be found in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Academy Museum, New York, NY; Hollins University Gallery, Roanoke, VA; William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, Mt. Kisco, NY; the Collections of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY; and the Watkins Collection at American University, Washington, DC, among others. In 2007, the Katzen Art Center at American University, Washington, DC hosted a retrospective of the artist’s work. Lewis lives and works in Leeds, MA.
An illustrated catalogue and online viewing room accompany this exhibition.
At Betty Cuningham Gallery, in another part of the Lower East Side, “Stanley Lewis: Paintings and Works on Paper” allowed us to savor some of this marvelously obsessive artist’s efforts to translate his hypersensitive scrutiny of his surroundings into marks on a surface.
Lazily, I refer you to two great descriptions of Stanley Lewis' paintings by John Yau and Thaddeus
Radell. I could do it myself, but- they have done it so well.
Lewis’s tattered canvases and pasted over drawings mirror a world in need of constant upkeep and repair.
Can a painter accommodate sweeping views and minute detail in a single work, and do justice to both? Stanley Lewisis fearless and tireless in proving he can.
