John Wesley
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
I recently undertook a project that involves illustration. Because I have not sketched in years (the extent of my sketches needed for my work includes just boxes and arrows), it took me a while to find that flow again. For inspiration, I looked up the stash of bookmarks I have on illustrators, collected along the way for this very purpose, and found John Wesley. Needless to say, I really like the minimal colour palettes, flat look and simple shapes of his work.
For almost fifty years, John Wesley has “created an unrelenting and remarkably singular body of work whose subject is no less than the American psyche. While many artists of his generation have used the popular image to explore the cultural landscape, Wesley has employed a comic strip-style and a compositional rigor to make deeply personal, often hermetic paintings that strike at the core of our most primal fears, joys, and desires.” (Chelsea Art Galleries)
“The beauty of Mr. Wesley’s paintings is as much in the abstraction as in the imagery. The reduced palette of pinks, coral reds, black and sky blue; the sensuous flux of curvy contour lines; and the perfect fitting of large shapes into the rectangle of the canvas — combine all that with the tantalizing imagery and you have paintings that are nearly impossible to look away from.” (New York Times)