Known as Fair and Square Throughout My Years, 2013
Oil and spray paint on panel
80 x 90 in. (203.2 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated on verso
CHW14063
It Was a Good Day, 2013
Oil and spray paint on panel
60 x 84 in. (152.4 x 213.36 cm)
Signed and dated on verso
CHW14065
Catch, 2013
Oil and spray paint on panel
78 x 80 in. (198.12 x 203.2 cm)
Signed and dated on verso
CHW14068
Sleeping Giants, 2013
Oil and spray paint on panel
84 x 120 in. (213.36 x 304.8 cm)
Signed and dated on verso
CHW14069
Untitled, 2011-2012
Oil and spray paint on panel
48 x 48 in. (121.92 x 121.92 cm)
Signed and dated on verso
CHW14072
Good Luck Sailor, 2013
Oil and spray paint on panel
72 x 96 in. (182.88 x 243.84 cm)
Signed and dated on verso
CHW14070
Chuck Webster
Blessing
September 5 - October 12, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 5th, 6 to 8 PM
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open its 2013-2014 season with an exhibition of recent paintings, by Chuck Webster. This exhibition is mounted in cooperation with ZieherSmith, Webster’s primary dealer. The artist will be present for an opening reception on Thursday, September 5th and the exhibition will remain on view through Saturday, October 12, 2013.
Webster can best be characterized as a visionary painter. His visual vocabulary is highly personal. Drawn from his imagination and from the world, the shapes in his paintings are abstract but oddly recognizable. Webster chose to title this show ‘Blessing’ (written in reverse) because, for Webster, it alludes to something beyond, something that he is reaching towards in his painting.
The current exhibition contains twelve paintings, all oil on panel, ranging in size from 12x14 to 78x112 inches. Sharing a kinship to the late paintings of Philip Guston, Webster’s paintings play with scale. Whether in a large painting or a small painting, Webster’s figure typically dominates the work. The surfaces are further activated by heavy brushwork, incidental markings and taut delineation.
This spring, Webster visited the Rothko Chapel, at the Menil in Houston, TX and completed several sketches during the visit. The chapel became a metaphor for his own interior space and the chapel’s octagonal footprint is the form in and entry to several of the paintings in this exhibition.
Born in Binghamton, NY, Chuck Webster received a BA from Oberlin College in 1992 and a MFA from American University in 1996. The artist’s work can be seen in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; and The Beinecke Library at Yale University, New Haven, CT. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Milton and Sally Michel Avery Visual Arts Fellowship, at Yaddo, 2010 and 2000; the MacDowell Fellowship, Peterborough, NH, 2004; and the Winter Fellowship at the Fine Art Works Center in Provincetown MA, 2004. Webster lives and works in New York City.
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