Roy De Forest: New Paintings

During December and January, George Adams Gallery will present new paintings by Bay Area artist Roy DeForest.  The exhibition will feature seven large-scale paintings; all depicting the artist's usual suspects--men in hats, women with pronounced noses, dogs, birds, and other assorted farm animals.  DeForest continues a play of color, pattern and textured surfaces to animate his unique cast of characters.  

Inspired by a recent series of drawings focussing on heads, these new paintings are dominated by large single and group portraits accompanied by a patchwork of smaller images that create a narrative by association.  In A Country Life, for example, the central figure is a cowboy surrounded by individual portraits of a horse, a steer, two birds, several dogs, and several variously sized portrait heads.  As in his previous work, the rich and intensely worked surfaces of DeForest's paintings enhance his composition, particularly his introduction of chunks of dried acrylic that create a mosaic-like effect. In Goat Daze, for example, a painterly campfire contrasts with the central figure of a wooly goat, heavily impastoed and outlined in black.  And in the work The Saga of the Shepherd Brothers the profile of a capped youth comprised of a mosaic-like cluster of bright yellow and orange paint chunks shares a dappled background of greens and browns with the brushy rendering of a panting dog.

Adding a sculptural element to the work, DeForest has created unique hand-painted frames for each painting, several with constructed creatures attached---for example, Black Horse Meadow includes a painted wood and vinyl red-eyed crow peering out from a perch at the top of the canvas.  


Exhibition Checklist

Clockwise from Reception Desk:

North of Patagonia, 2004-5
acrylic on canvas
62 x 66 inches
RDp 28

A Country Life, 2005
acrylic on canvas
60 3/4 x 65 1/2 inches
RDp 32

Present Company, 2005
acrylic on canvas
59 1/4 x 54 1/2 inches
RDp 31

Black Horse Meadow, 2004-5
acrylic on canvas
62 x 73 3/4 inches
RDp 27

Goat Daze, 2004-5
acrylic on canvas
58 1/4 x 60 1/4 inches
RDp 24

Song of the Blackbird, 2005
acrylic on canvas
60 1/4 x 64 1/2 inches
RDp 33

Dog Bench #4, 2003
powder coat enamel on cast aluminum,
bronze and stainless steel
35 x 68 x 48 inches
RDs 11

Memoirs of a Young Man, 2004
acrylic on canvas
56 1/4 x 60 inches
RDp 29

Front Window:

The BirdWatcher, 2005
Acrylic on canvas
57 x 64 inches
RDp 30