Oliver Vernon

New York City

Combining elements of landscape painting, figuration, and abstraction, Oliver Vernon’s practice pushes all of these categories beyond easy distinction, creating a hybrid visual language all his own. “The picture plane is a continuum of give and take,” says Vernon, “where positive and negative space give way to each other in rhythmic intervals. Energy oscillates and migrates, initiating changes along the way. And color is a navigational tool to guide the eye through the chaotic scape.”

Vernon lives in the Sierra Nevada region of northern California, and glimpses of these breathtaking vistas turn up frequently in his work. However, landscape is never a subject or even backdrop, per se, but instead a visual cue toward the expansive scale of Vernon’s abstraction. In many works, this takes the form of a wave-like torrent of arching brushstrokes and cascading patterns that dominate the canvas, devouring mountains, valleys, clouds, and the horizon, or nimbly swirling everything into the overall composition. The effect is destabilizing, imposing an abstract system on the more common notion of a fixed, physical reality—landscape gives way to visual frenzy, flights of imagination, and transformation.

In Renegade Trajectories, Vernon explores this dynamic with twelve medium-sized acrylic on linen or canvas paintings and a suite of twelve ink on paper works.

Oliver Vernon

Joshua Liner Gallery

May 30 – June 29, 2013
540 West 28th Street
New York, NY 10001
USA

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