Stanley Lewis
Courtesy of Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York
Stanley Lewis is an artist and art teacher. He was a member of the Bowery Gallery in New York City from 1986 to 2008 and is still a member of Oxbow Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts. He is represented by Lohin Geduld Gallery in New York, NY. His work has been shown recently at Salander O’Reilly Galleries in New York City.
Lewis emerged from the circle surrounding the painter, teacher and charismatic outsider, Leland Bell with whom he studied at Yale. Bell saw the influence of French modernism as way of deepening figurative painting through greater consciousness of form, and was a great admirer of Giacometti, Balthus and the later work of Andre Derain. Lewis also admires the English painters Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff with their perceptual approach and aggressively activated paint surfaces.
Like them, his gloppy paint surfaces are aggressive and sensual though he differs in that he is much more involved with a direct naturalistic transcription of the casual, disheveled, white bread American subjects. These he paints directly and laboriously on the spot, including everything in his field of vision, weeds, trash, cars, power lines, etc.
You can see more of Stanley’s work here.
