Continuing through September 2, 2015
Water merges with land and sky, and everything seems to be floating in David Preston Wells’ paintings, which are part landscape, part still life. Although he considers himself primarily an abstract artist, references to events and objects abound. The titles only hint at the stories behind his paintings, and the viewer is left to imagine the narratives. For example, “Green Domino” contains a shape that resembles a domino, but the lower half looks more like a commercial building collapsing into the body of water that takes up the bottom half of the painting, while the top suggests buildings on fire. “Stacks” is an abstracted urban landscape that seems to depict one of the twin towers of 9/11. A series of stacked rectangles has flames leaping from the top and side of the structure. Adjacent buildings appear to be exploding as well, while the sky is a swirling mass of clouds and smoke. “When the Wheels Fall Off” is a related scene in which a large building floating on a white cloud emits fire and black smoke. A branching shape on the left could be a tree, or it could be one of the twisted pieces of metal that survived the 9/11 attack.
Titled “Reverie," this large show of 24 oils on canvas and 12 graphite drawings on paper lives up to its name — the work has a dreamlike quality in which various nebulous objects advance and recede. “It’s a Novelty” clearly depicts a party popper tied with red ribbon, but the other items surrounding it are more ambiguous. “Swing” is an imaginary architectural construction revolving in space, while “Ornament” is dominated by a large snow globe containing a red ornament. Other somewhat mysterious entities are rendered with visible brushstrokes that create a maelstrom of movement. Wells’ paintings, with their layers of color, various perspectives, and evocative subject matter, effectively combine elements of abstraction, expressionism, and representation.
