"Bedroom" oil on canvas 60x54 inches
"Climbing Color" oil on canvas
60x36 inches
"Contiguous" oil on canvas 48x72 inches
"Cubis" oil on canvas 50x66 inches
"Early Blaze" oil on canvas 36x36 inches
"Lexington" oil on canvas 60x66 inches
"Orchard" oil on canvas 48x60 inches
"Park" oil on canvas 30x40 inches
"Telling Lines" oil on canvas
48x36 inches
"Trigreen" oil on canvas 36x36 inches
"Liquid" oil on canvas 48x36 inches
"Talon" oil on canvas 60x48 inches
The new year commences with two exciting mid-career artists from Northern California who have very distinctive approaches to abstract painting. Whether done on canvas, board or paper, abstraction gives both the artist and viewer greater freedom to engage in a kind of dialogue.
Daniel Phill (left column), originally from Washington State, has combined solid artistic training (San Francisco Art Institute and Stanford) with two decades of dedicated innovation. He studied with several Bay Area legends, including Nathan Oliviera and Jack Jefferson, and the latter’s influence is seen in the way Phill constructs three dimensional illusions through the interplay of puzzle-like segments of color on canvas or paper. The surfaces of his paintings record the spontaneous building up and scraping away of paint to create almost organic shapes. Phill’s works are lively and vividly colorful, emerging from a palette of rich, saturated hues. The vibrant fields of color and bold compositions imbue his paintings with a sense of space and motion that seem to suggest landscapes. One writer aptly dubbed these daring creations “lyrical abstractions.”
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Mr. Phill has exhibited widely from San Francisco to New York, garnering praise and attention from prestigious publications such as Art In America, Art News and The New Yorker. His works form part of the permanent collections of the Achenbach Foundation, Tucson Museum of Art, Ernst & Young Corporate and the U.S. State Department. He has shown with the Eleonore Austerer Gallery since 2001.
Catherine Woskow (right column) was known for her graceful nudes and social scenes rendered in oil wash and pencil. Then another creative outburst ensued and a completely new style emerged, purely abstract yet equally powerful. Her color pallet changed from subtle sepia tones to rich khaki backgrounds with either red or orange panels. These new works are created on acid free museum board then mounted on wooden panels with fragments of muslin collage added.
Born in California, Catherine Woskow studied at Sonoma State University, Bradford Liberal Arts College in Massachusetts, and the Koningkijke Akademie of Art in the Netherlands. Her work has been shown in select galleries from the Pacific Northwest to Chicago, and she has been one of our most collected artists for more than a decade.
Woskow’s life and abstract work are strongly influenced by her travels in Asia and practice of Japanese Buddhism, which allows her to listen to her muse. According to the artist, “Asia’s quiet presence influences all that I do.” For example, she uses calligraphic strokes, often in vivid red, that accent the blocks of color.
In addition to these large abstract works on display this month, Woskow is pushing the boundaries again by starting to combine her earlier figurative work with the later abstractions. One can see this merging of both her styles in paintings such as “Cards,” which she calls “persons pieces.” The new body of work slightly flirts with abstraction while depicting realistic figures, creating an interesting counterpoint to her own non-figurative work and that of Daniel Phill.
"Cards" 2005, acrylic and muslin on board
42 ½ x 41
"Florida" 2005, Acrylic-mixed media, 61 x 33
“George II ” 2005, Acrylic-mixed media,
29 ½ x 33
“Raccoons All Night” 2005, Acrylic-mixed media,
33 ½ x 41
“Sin Eaters” 2005, Acrylic-mixed media, 54 ½ x 31
“Cadium Wind” 2004, Acrylic & muslin on panel,
40 x 58 inches
"Cocoon" acrylic and muslin on panel
32x65 inches
"Limb" acrylic and muslin on board
62x10 inches
"Red Red" acrylic and muslin on panel
40x57 inches
"Rising" acrylic and muslin on board
40x43 inches
"Seated Back Study" Ciclee print
18 x 24 inches (28x35 framed)