"A Piece of Sky" to debut new works by Daniel Tousignant at Geras Tousignant Gallery (278 North Palm Canyon Drive) on April 20th with an artist opening champagne and chocolate reception from 5:00 to 8:00 PM. The show will run through May 31, 2018.
In Mr. Tousignant's Cloudscape collection, there is no definition of foreground and therefore, no fixed perspective. By not telling us precisely where we are viewing from, it invites us to travel freely within the full dimensions of an ambiguous space. The power of this exhibit comes from this inherent presence, which demands our participation. Each of these paintings has the same attention to surface detail seen in the "Single Tree & Double Tree" paintings of Mr. Tousignant earlier work. As then, he uses color and his brush to move the paint around in strokes that do anything but follow the course of the forms. In other words, the marks are totally unexpected and, as in nature, they are not attached to the clouds. The surface is quite unusual for this reason but ultimately fresh-feeling and a painterly surface without limits.
Image Courtesy Geras Tousignant Gallery
His paintings are layered; a kind of soft flowing across every inch of the surface. Tousignant (who works from memory) says that he makes paintings basically from start to finish over a several month period (nights included.) Tousignant captures a particular subject and moment in each piece. These paintings are isolating the image in the blue field as if the subject has been taken out of context, and are therefore necessarily abstract.
What becomes intriguing is how Mr. Tousignant approaches the point where abstraction and representation meet and converge. In “Cloudscapes” Tousignant, broadly painted sweeps of blues ranging from cobalt, aqua marine, teal, cerulean, amber, eggshell and cream. Suggests clouds above a field or distant vista, but they also approach meditative color. Daniel completes the paintings with an aged several part and labor intensive varnish similar to an old master painter. Landscape painters have a responsibility to reveal the qualities of a scene they enjoyed and share their experience with viewers. Tousignant Scenes of Clouds offer an honest, straightforward sense of place.
Discovering Tousignant cloudscape paintings is like discovering the sky itself – that pleasant sensation when you look to the sky and see the cloudscape open up before you. Each of us views the sky in both unique and universal ways. All of us can look at the same sky but each person’s preference affects his or her appreciation of that sky.
