John Natsoulas Gallery

Exhibition Dates: September 26 - October 27, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 6, 7-10pm

Tom Lieber is an abstract painter and printmaker. Lieber's large-scale abstractions are notable for their bold, natural colors and fluid marks placed against a layered, neutral background. Informed by nature, Lieber's work reflects his efforts to channel his interior life onto the canvas in the most intuitive and emotional manner possible.

Lieber's use of gesture stems from the abstract expressionist tradition exemplified by Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline; yet, his subtle color and tonal variations reveal an affinity to the painterly minimalism of Brice Marden. The early canvases from the 1970s consist of expansive, monochromatic color zones that, over time, take on increasingly explicit and more painterly gestures.1 Lieber's later work represents a more physical and powerful approach. Oftentimes, a single brushstroke or gesture anchors the painting, allowing the underlying color fields and tonal variations to recede and advance across the ground.

Tom Lieber is a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Grant and has exhibited extensively since 1974. In 2003, the Honolulu Contemporary Museum in Hawaii organized a major show of his work. His paintings and monotypes are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Tate Gallery, London.

Larry Clark, a self-taught African American artist from Louisiana, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area almost 20 years ago. Teaching art at the Central City Hospitality House and becoming one of the best ?outside? artists in the county, Clark?s imagery is haunting. Clark is known as one of the great human rights activist in the visual arts world, having done paintings and drawings of the lynching of his ancestors in the Deep South. As well as creating incredible portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and other important black leaders, Clark?s constant theme has been black poverty in America and the oppression they have endured.

James Chaffee's images arrive out of the process of painting and are characterized by their sumptuous brushwork and use of color in support of his love for the properties of paint. His color and brushwork describe imagery and space as the figure becomes the willing tool in support of his energy and passion for painting.

He respects the great tradition of Bay Area Figuration as well as the work of contemporaries Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj and Jenny Saville.

James Chaffee was born in Detroit and graduated from Michigan State University. He studied further at MSU, California State University, Long Beach and at the University of California, Davis.