“Hemispheres” Mixed Media Paintings and Digital Photography
The Art Association of Jacksonville is please to welcome mixed media artist Greg
Amend to the David Strawn Art Gallery, 331 W. College Ave., Jacksonville, March 2-31.
An opening reception will be held on Saturday, March 2 from 6-8 p.m. with “Gallery
Talk” by Greg at 6:30 p.m. The opening and “Gallery Talk” is free and open to the
public.
Greg Amend is a painter and photographer who lives and works in New York City. He
grew up in New Jersey, the eighth sibling of nine. Always interest in the Fine Arts, Greg
majored in Theater in college, studies acting in New York and worked as an actor in
regional theater for several years. He is also a classically trained pianist.
Greg has studies drawing and watercolor painting at a number of respected institutions
including The Arts Students League of New York in Manhattan. However, he considers
himself to be predominately a self-taught painter and photographer. He has exhibited at a
number of shows in New York and the surrounding area and his paintings and
photography can be found in private collections around the world.
Greg’s paintings are chiefly influenced by the mid-20th century Color Field painters,
whose approach is based in flat forms that confront the viewer directly. This directness
serves to banish analysis and rather taps into the viewer’s emotional truth. In a letter to
The New York Times in 1943 Mark Rothko and Adolf Gottlieb (tow of the most iconic
artists from this period) wrote that the purpose of Color field painting is to, “…destroy
illusion and reveal truth. Figure and ground are one, and the space of the picture,
conceived as a field, seems to spread out beyond the edges of the canvas.” The intention
of Greg’s paintings is obvious and without irony; the aim to hit you squarely on the head
with clarity and emotion resonance.
The photos take on a recent trip to the coast of Alaska, share an obvious synergy with the
paintings. The vast, natural, open spaces of this other worldly terrain almost eschew
dimension and detail and take on a flatness that can be conceived as a field. Here, too,
the space if the picture seems to spread out beyond its borders as the lens struggles to
encompass the pure, raw, straight-on spirit of the natural world.
The David Strawn Art Gallery hours beginning March 3 are: Sundays 1-3 p.m., Tuesday
– Saturday 4-6 p.m. The Gallery is handicapped accessible
