#donwest

Shade (Saguaro National Monument East 7), Don West

Ambience, texture, serenity in the desert colors. There is the promise of drama in the light/ shadow interplay. Atmospheric displays of intensity throughout the vibrant color relationships. Soft but sharp, clouds, rocks, sky. Naturalistic and realistic but approaching the abstract. Oil paint like butter, sweet and cool, hot and spot on. Earth tones and sun drenched environmental overtones.

Mesa Verde, Don West

The Illusion paintings seek to capture their own Magic. They are illusions of a sort, but not of things. In some ways they are illusions of paintings. Look closely you see the forms, colors, and textures of the paint, indicative of life. You feel the space, the weight or weightlessness of matter, and the movement or energy of reality. Look even closer, you see that for all that appears to be there to look at, you are seeing only paint on canvas, just something to contemplate. Thomas Merton wrote: “Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life.”

Green Flash 5, Don West

Fluidly painted with a brush, mason's trowel and spray bottle, my reminiscence of the green flash phenomenon from Pacific Beach, which is constantly changing colors and moods. I am capturing these impressions and emotions garnered over a period of time. Returning to the scene often. Re-felt and re-envisioned. This work is directly painted in many layers over days inspired by a welling up of insight and feeling. High end luscious full bodied Golden Acrylics on canvas. Mysterious and provocative. An inspiring and forceful presence.

Minotaur, Don West

Reminiscent of Picasso from the Greek Series, a transparent acrylic delineation of space, the artist's signature mark and the figure/ground relationship. An illusion of space on the flat surface, a sustained free-flowing expression of form, mark-making and color, through a resist material.

Eclipse, Don West

Straight forward gestural expressionism and drawing with acrylic paint and graphite. The black and whites come from the resist paintings which began as the Greeks. An experiential exercise in the removal of color from the process of expressionism and direct mark-making. Action painting in one of it’s most direct manners.