Gallery 8 Invitation

Gallery 8 Invitation
Letterpress and tipped-on offset
lithograph, 6.25 x 4.75"
1963, Toledo OH

"Gallery 8" in the Toledo Museum of Art was often used for exhibitions of work by local or area artists, including this one which I shared with sculptor David Hysell, a sculptor on the teaching staff at the museum.

For this invitation, I "cannibalized" extra copies of several of the offset-lithograph landscapes I had produced during the two previous years.  David Hysell, who was admirably easy-going, did not seem to mind that the invitation featured my work and ignored his.

(Ed. Note - while David's invite "ignores" Hysell's work, a story in the February 5, 1963 edition of the Toledo Blade mentions Hysell at some length, albeit after noting David May's inclusion in the 20th American Drawings Annual.)

 

River - Oil on Canvas, 20 x 14"

River

Oil on canvas, 20 x 14"

1963

I painted this entirely imaginary landscape as an exercise in creating the illusion of space without relying on traditional perspective.  I visualized this as a space seen in a convex mirror, looming toward the viewer in the middle and receding around the edges. 

Landscape - Oil on Burlap, 17.5 x 14.5

Landscape
Oil on burlap, 17.5 x 14.5"
1963

This painting is another experiment in space and perspective, painted around the same time as "River."  Here, I was trying to create a flat, frieze-like space that did not recede behind the picture plane but pushed out in front of it, rather in the manner of some Impressionist painters.  Technically, "Landscape" is also very different from "River" in that "Landscape" is thickly (and rather laboriously) painted with heavy impasto, a technique I was just moving away from.  By comparison, the technique in "River" is the direction I was heading.  The paint is much "juicier," thinned with lindseed oil and applied with rapid brush strokes.