Interlude

About

Amanda Scuglia’s newest series of oil paintings explore the interaction between internal experiences and chance happenings in nature. Through the artist’s painterly style and dramatic interplay between light and shadow, the viewer is encouraged to enter and participate in the intimate and spiritual moments captured in each scene.  Each painting was inspired by a specific time of day, ranging from just before twilight with the soft glow of the afternoon still present, into dusk and the hours of total darkness that follow.  The young couples in the forest possess a grounded, intuitive energy.  This energy is present in every work: as seen in the speckled light dancing across the bodies in the painting, Sisters, and through the inviting, confident gaze of the woman in Summon. 

Dutch artist, Wouter Nijland, creates three dimensional geometric oil paintings based on a set of chance rules and coincidence.  Using a playful yet rigid system based off an x and y axis planes, the artist uses dice, coins and coded marbles to codify and scale his compositions.  The rules established for each painting also determine the gradient of the brushstroke and the border between shapes as well as the polygonal shapes themselves.  The monochromatic pigment in this series of paintings are in fact a mixture of approximately twelve different shades of the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.  The heavily-mixed oil layers are thick, so one can follow the brushstrokes as they catch the light.