Richard Wilson: Concerning Measure

Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Richard Wilson: Concerning Measure. For abstract painter Richard Wilson (b. 1944), simplicity is essential to his practice. Using no more than twelve colors in a painting, he strives to remove all discernible indications of his hand on the surface, creating a minimally disruptive visual transmission of form and color directly from artist to eye. Wilson’s objective is a conduction of energy and sensation that will be “useful” to the viewer, whether through provocation of action or thought, or simply by generating pleasure.

Despite his immaculately balanced compositions, Wilson uses no formal numbering system, measured ratios, or established rules to create his paintings. He works intellectually and intuitively to discover the equilibrium in his works, guided by the foundational aesthetics and mathematical harmonies which underpin the interrelated structures found across nature, music, architecture, and art.

Each work, painted on two seamlessly joined panels of equal size, explores the rich implications of contrasting and complementary dualities: light and dark, earth and sky, life and death. The component panels are bound together to form a complete, meaningful entity, each element a fundamentally inseparable part of the whole. Among the works on display are recent paintings which Wilson refers to as Transoms. They emerge from childhood impressions of this style of window – the pleasing proportions, the air of mystery, and the excitement of unanticipated messages and overheard conversations crossing a permeable threshold.

Wilson’s titles for these paintings are plucked from the writings of Thomas Merton, individual words selected from unconnected paragraphs and paired together in an instinctive fashion. The artist feels a philosophical kinship with Merton, a Mid-Century Trappist monk, scholar, and political activist whose work promoted interfaith connection and understanding. Though they diverge in the particulars of belief and objective, Wilson likens his experience of artmaking to the rigors of monastic life: a practice which demands dedication, ritual, and discipline in the pursuit of excellence.