Paint on Paper #3
Acrylic on Paper
30" x 30"
1979
Artist's Collection
Copyright © Dennis Guastella 1979
Another in a series of works on paper that I completed while teaching at South Dakota State University (1975-1980). My larger paintings took well over three-weeks to a month to complete, and while in the process of working them out, many more ideas for future large-scale painting came to my mind. A good way to develop them was to do smaller works on paper. I liked the intimate scale these smaller works created. In this work, I wanted to explore the illusion of three-dimensional space by the chevron pattern in the background while the fragmented grid insinuated another structural design. This fragmented grid was created by the beginning of an extruded line of acrylic paint and abruptly ending it, which creates, what I call, a line of coincidence. The fragmented grid is actually the black painted ground. The candy stripe color pattern alludes to child's play while the technical proficiency makes a completely different statement.
