David Richard Gallery is pleased to present Pastoral Pictures, a selection of recent paintings by New York artist William Staples in his first solo exhibition in New York City and debut with the gallery. The imagery is of landscapes and figures that reference Modernist pastoral painting, yet the artist considers the paintings abstractions. The images include nude bathers, mythical figures, animals and birds along with detailed fragments of trees and branches, windmills, valleys, hillsides, rivers and ponds. The abstraction comes from the not-so-traditional palettes (reminiscent of Impressionism and Modernism in general), the medium and novel materials as well as alterations to the perimeters and manipulated surfaces of the canvas (something near and dear to the artist). There are 30 paintings of an intimate size in the presentation, ranging from 8 x 8 inches square to 28 x 23 inches with only one large painting measuring 52 x 42 inches.

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