David Richard Gallery presents rarely-seen work by two important painters who were part of the influential Washington DC art scene that emerged in the 1960s.  Paul Reed was one of the founders of the Washington Color School, along with artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, whose work had a major impact on abstract painting after the 50s.  Experimental shapes and color combinations are the hallmarks of Reed’s work.

Tom Green, a fellow Washingtonian, was greatly influenced by the older Reed and this is evident in his approach to color.  Yet there is a playfulness in his work reminiscent of Joan Miro’s Constellation series.

David Eichholtz, co-director, notes:  “Although both Reed and Green are in the pantheon of post-60s abstraction, there is a real freshness to the work and true relevance to artists continuing the journey of abstract painting.’

David Richard Gallery is delighted to present “A Fresh Look”, two solo exhibitions featuring later-career work by Paul Reed and Tom Green. The exhibition for Reed presents works on paper from the late 1980s through the early 90’s — diptychs, triptychs and quadriptychs — where Reed explored visual perception using mirror images of lyrical shapes and color harmonies. Green’s exhibition is a selection of paintings on canvas and paper that were created between 2006 through 2010 and represent his last major body of work prior to his death. The presentations will be on exhibition from March 11 – April 23, 2016 with an opening reception on Friday, March 11 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM. The gallery’s new location is at 1570 Pacheco Street, Suite A1, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505, phone 505-983-9555 in the midtown neighborhood art and design district.

About the Artists:

Tom Green

Tom Green, who taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design for 40 years, was influenced by the Washington Color School, which emphasized abstract, geometric paintings in bright colors.

He is perhaps best known for his large paintings of colorful “glyphs” — big, curving, figures that resemble letters from a mysterious alphabet. In 1988, former Washington Post art critic Paul Richard described an enigmatic Green painting as “like a comic strip for Martians,” but with understanding “just around the corner . . . one train of thought away.”

As he himself once wrote: “I know enough about the formal qualities of art: form, color, composition. I know it when I see it. It’s similar to music when your ears tell you something is right; you don’t need someone to explain it. It’s content that I often don’t fully understand, but I’m not preoccupied with content because the audience carries so much perceptual baggage. I like to make my art ambiguous to keep things open to interpretation. The best response to a painting is to get into it as a child would—not trying to interpret it but reacting to it at an emotional level.”

Born in 1942, Green received his BFA and MFA from the University of Maryland.  His first solo exhibition was in 1968, which began an illustrious exhibition career that lasted until his death in 2012.  His work can be found in the Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, among numerous other public collections.

Paul Reed

Paul Reed, born in Washington DC in 1919, was one of the founding members – along with Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring and Tom Downing - of the Washington Color School and a major proponent of Color Field Painting.

The focus of his long career was based on color and the interplay with surface and light. Reed created luminous paintings— stretched, not stretched, square, rectangular and dynamically shaped, on canvas, muslin and paper—that explored transparency through a range of subject matter spanning mandalas, biomorphic shapes, discs and geometric abstractions.

Reed graduated from San Diego State College and the Corcoran School of Art where he taught from 1962 to 1971.  The Washington Color School burst on the scene with an exhibition in 1965 at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art.  He was featured the following year in the Des Moines Art Center exhibition Op Art.  Public collections include the Detroit Institute of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Museum of Art , Phoenix Museum of Art, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. 

Paul Reed continued an active exhibition career until his passing in 2015.