Blue Tangle

LIE-046-OC

Hackett Freedman Gallery presents a selection of new oil paintings and works on paper by internationally noted abstract painter Tom Lieber, October 14–November 27, 2004.

In his second exhibition at Hackett-Freedman Gallery, Lieber will present six to eight large canvases and paintings on paper whose dancing, calligraphic brushstrokes culminate in brilliant tangles of color and light. As with the works Lieber presented here in early 2003, these paintings feature signature arcing lines and arabesques in limpid, natural colors traced against a stripped white ground.

Lieber paints as a full-body experience, using his hands to make large, sweeping gestures, much like a modern dancer or someone doing tai chi. Lieber feels the body is less apt than the mind to create something contrived, so while he paints, he meditates using aikido and yoga; this unorthodox process informs his work as much as any intellectual idea or natural form.

Lieber also employs an innovative painting technique which he initiated a few years ago, using monotype printing rollers to apply oil paint directly to his canvases. By interposing a mechanical device into an intuitive act, Lieber feels he has arrived at a form of deep expression that is unforced.

“The rollers have made for a cooler, flatter space,” says Lieber, noting that now the paint feels “more raw” and “direct,” which he finds exciting. The artist uses different media (oil on canvas, acrylic on paper, monotype) to achieve a range of effects, wet and dry, and varying densities of paint and form.

Nevertheless, nature remains the artist’s chief external inspiration, and a move to Hawaii a few years ago has had marked effects on Lieber’s forms and color. (A native of St. Louis, Lieber lived and exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly fifteen years.

Lieber’s paintings are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Tate Gallery in London; and others. In 2003, The Honolulu Contemporary Museum’s “Biennial of Hawaii Artists” featured a show of Lieber’s recent paintings.