Richard J. Watson

Abstract painting w/ collage & photographs, Black African American history

2020

"Optic Diamond IV" is a geometric abstract acrylic on canvas painting with mixed media elements. It is a square 36" x 36" canvas that hangs on the diagonal to measure 52" x 52 x 2". ...

"Southern Breezes" is an acrylic painting with photograph portraits and a number of found objects integrated into the painting including lace, decorative objets, and printed imagery referencing African American history. This painting "collects fragments from the artist's everyday life -- discarded objects found on the streets of Philadelphia that are saved and later repurposed to germinate an idea." Signed by the artist. No need for framing - all hanging hardware included and ready to install on your wall. "Most of my works are supported by memories of the past and suggested realities. Issues of social politics, ancestral references, and astral projections are presented with fragmented elements...

"Same Tune Different Drummer" is an acrylic collage painting with photograph portraits and a number of found objects integrated into the painting such a as military reference such as drums, guns, bullets, American flags, and imagery referencing American history. This painting "collects fragments from the artist's everyday life -- discarded objects found on the streets of Philadelphia that are saved and later repurposed to germinate an idea." Signed and dated by the artist. Already framed (with a second frame collaged into the work). All hanging hardware included and ready to install on your wall. "Most of my works are supported by memories of the past and suggested realities. Issues of social politics, ancestral references, and astral projections are presented with fragmented elements...

"The Known Soldier" is an acrylic painting with photograph portraits and a number of found objects integrated into the painting including lace, decorative objets, and printed imagery referencing African American history. This painting "collects fragments from the artist's everyday life -- discarded objects found on the streets of Philadelphia that are saved and later repurposed to germinate an idea." Signed by the artist. No need for framing - all hanging hardware included and ready to install on your wall. "Most of my works are supported by memories of the past and suggested realities. Issues of social politics, ancestral references, and astral projections are presented with fragmented elements...

This is an abstract collage / painting created from acrylic and found objects. It is framed in a wide, dark wooden frame with gold accents. It includes several manipulated historic photograph of figures in many guises, arranged as if on stage. It is signed and dated by the artist lower left. PROVENANCE: Exhibited in "Portals + Revelations: Richard J. Watson," the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Oct 2021 - Mar 2022. "Most of my works are supported by memories of the past and suggested realities. Issues of social politics, ancestral references, and astral projections are presented with fragmented elements of 'real life' collaged and collapsed, as dreams are prone to do. If connections are made, all the better. I feel that life should remind us of our dreams." - Richard J. Watson Richard J. Watson is an icon in the Philadelphia art world. Much of his work relates to his experiences as a Black African American man. He is a graduate of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1968), has taught at his alma mater, and has served in the Exhibitions Department at the African American Museum in Philadelphia since the 1980s. He has been exhibiting his work for decades, and has an extensive bibliography. His work is held in the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Uniworld Corporation; Sony; the Federal Reserve Bank; the City of Philadelphia; Sprint; the Church of the Advocate; the poet Dr. Sonia Sanchez; and the Woodmere Museum...

"Birth of the Blues" is a large acrylic painting with a photograph portraits and a number of found objects integrated into the painting, including metal doorplate, and wood panel ins...

Original work of art. Cerj Lalonde moves smoothly from the canvas to the camera, from computers to installations, producing and showcasing an extraordinarily rich and complex body o...

Misha Milovanovich Pink from the Inevitable Feeling Series, 2016 Acrylic & oil pastel, ink, enamel and celulose paint on canvas. 72 x 59 cm Hovering between painting, drawing and watercolour sketches, her new work represents a form of personal expression that is less concerned with the impact and novelty of popular culture and more about the quiet uncovering of emotion. Her trademark organic forms are still present though now they are empathetic rather than explosively joyful. The colours are softer, somewhat washed out and hazy, as if half-perceived or remembered. The colour palette and the energy of the mark making reference to the now buried source material -  abstracted Hentai illustrations, Japanese manga-infused depictions of male dominance, rape and power fantasies. The never-satisfied, always distracted state in which this dislocated field of sexual aggression persists stands in for our instantly redundant, surface only culture- transactional, bullying and ephemeral.   Her paintings are sensorially rich and and yet muted, the masses of fleshy intersections and writhing calligraphy feel like they are moving out of the immediate present and floating up out of time.   They are soaked in the in nuances of early modernism- Klee, Miro and Matta. She explores emotive, expressionistic tender spaces in these lyrically rendered conceptual paintings - densely layered works that operate in the enigmatic gaps between rational structure and spontaneity. Misha also echoes Kandinsky and his sensuality of musical movement, evoking his concerns with the spiritual, all emerging naturally from the rich soil she has carefully laid down in her previous work. The language and texture of her materials are important to Misha who prepares her own pigment- paying great attention to form, surface and the moment-to moment physicality of her practice. Misha Milovanovich is a Belgrade-born artist living and working in London. Misha works across several mediums, from sculpture to painting and live art. Characterised by vivid colour, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, Misha's visual work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms. She often features discarded shards of consumerism - unloved icons of disposability and careless consumption. Misha's work is often a symphonic abstraction. Her colourful, densely layered works are held in a state of tension between order and chaos, rational structure and spontaneity. She combines depth and surface relief, orchestrating bold contrasts of form, texture and space in her pictures. An intimate colour palette of bodily fluids - red, pink, white, black, yellow and brown - animate the writhing forms and the refracted memories of cartoonish cultural production. A cultural polymath, Misha is constantly engaged in observing society and it’s distortions of desire, lust and attitudes to the body. Traditional techniques have been studied and absorbed and although her work is partly conceptual, it's execution always reflects these hard won technical abilities. Misha's main subject matter is emotion, so naturally her work is highly personal and biographical in ways that create a direct, emotional response from the viewer. Empathy and the universals of human experience - passion, nostalgia, desire and disgust are inescapable in her work. Misha is herself a ‘displaced’ person, having left Serbia for London in her late teens she still carries within her a ‘stranger’s perspective’ and perceives the world as an outsider, someone ever alert to the non-verbal subtleties of communication. Misha's artistic progenitors include her mentor Martin Kippenberger, Wassily Kandinsky and Phillip Guston as well as contemporary artists Gilbert and George, Keith Tyson, Robert Pruitt...

Misha Milovanovich Our Heads Are Round So That Our Thoughts Can Change Directons- Picabia from the Inevitable Feeling Series, 2016 Acrylic & oil pastel, ink, enamel and celulose paint on canvas. 72 x 59 cm Hovering between painting, drawing and watercolour sketches, her new work represents a form of personal expression that is less concerned with the impact and novelty of popular culture and more about the quiet uncovering of emotion. Her trademark organic forms are still present though now they are empathetic rather than explosively joyful. The colours are softer, somewhat washed out and hazy, as if half-perceived or remembered. The colour palette and the energy of the mark making reference to the now buried source material -  abstracted Hentai illustrations, Japanese manga-infused depictions of male dominance, rape and power fantasies. The never-satisfied, always distracted state in which this dislocated field of sexual aggression persists stands in for our instantly redundant, surface only culture- transactional, bullying and ephemeral.   Her paintings are sensorially rich and and yet muted, the masses of fleshy intersections and writhing calligraphy feel like they are moving out of the immediate present and floating up out of time.   They are soaked in the in nuances of early modernism- Klee, Miro and Matta. She explores emotive, expressionistic tender spaces in these lyrically rendered conceptual paintings - densely layered works that operate in the enigmatic gaps between rational structure and spontaneity. Misha also echoes Kandinsky and his sensuality of musical movement, evoking his concerns with the spiritual, all emerging naturally from the rich soil she has carefully laid down in her previous work. The language and texture of her materials are important to Misha who prepares her own pigment- paying great attention to form, surface and the moment-to moment physicality of her practice. Misha Milovanovich is a Belgrade-born artist living and working in London. Misha works across several mediums, from sculpture to painting and live art. Characterised by vivid colour, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, Misha's visual work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms. She often features discarded shards of consumerism - unloved icons of disposability and careless consumption. Misha's work is often a symphonic abstraction. Her colourful, densely layered works are held in a state of tension between order and chaos, rational structure and spontaneity. She combines depth and surface relief, orchestrating bold contrasts of form, texture and space in her pictures. An intimate colour palette of bodily fluids - red, pink, white, black, yellow and brown - animate the writhing forms and the refracted memories of cartoonish cultural production. A cultural polymath, Misha is constantly engaged in observing society and it’s distortions of desire, lust and attitudes to the body. Traditional techniques have been studied and absorbed and although her work is partly conceptual, it's execution always reflects these hard won technical abilities. Misha's main subject matter is emotion, so naturally her work is highly personal and biographical in ways that create a direct, emotional response from the viewer. Empathy and the universals of human experience - passion, nostalgia, desire and disgust are inescapable in her work. Misha is herself a ‘displaced’ person, having left Serbia for London in her late teens she still carries within her a ‘stranger’s perspective’ and perceives the world as an outsider, someone ever alert to the non-verbal subtleties of communication. Misha's artistic progenitors include her mentor Martin Kippenberger, Wassily Kandinsky and Phillip Guston as well as contemporary artists Gilbert and George, Keith Tyson, Robert Pruitt...

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