Mysteries pays homage to David Geiser while marking the event of Lucy Villeneuve’s first major show. Both artists paint big. Both artists are abstract expressionists. David’s canvases are tactile and deep, often being composed of many layers of shellac, pitch, tar, rope and scrap wood. Lucy Villeneuve works with the elements of Daoism and specifically the Wu Wei, the art of non-doing, while focusing on the experience of painting rather than the work itself. The exhibition is from May 8, 2021 until June 10, 2021.
"David Geiser was primarily an abstract expressionist painter, who lived and worked most of his life in NYC and Springs, on the East End. As a young man, he skipped graduate school at Yale, moving to San Francisco in the summer of 1969. There he hung out with S. Clay Wilson and Grey Arlington immersing himself in the underground comix movement, illustrating over 1000 issues.
He left that scene in 1976, for Paris, to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for 3 raucous years, and finally settled in Soho New York, in 1980. He spent 20 years of his life there, later moving to Springs in 2000. In the rustic cabin in the Catskills he owned while living in NY, he loved to fish trout in nearby streams; critic Robert Morgan noted that he “loved the fresh water scent, the isolation, the concentration, and the necessity to remain alert.” From the streams and forests, the ‘color, tones, of glazes, subtle pours and drips’ of his work emerged.
When he moved on to ocean shores, harbors and bays in Springs, he was moved anew by the bulge and nuzzle of the sea, “the world of eternal struggle to some wondrous outward manifestation." His daily ritual took him to Main Beach in East Hampton at dawn and Maidstone Beach at sunset, where he exalted in the inexhaustible glory.
His sons Cameron, Jake, and I knew this ancient man inside the modern one, and dearly miss him. He was, as Shakespeare said, “a man, take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again."
~ Mercedes Ruehl
Lucy Villeneuve (b.1995) earned her BA in psychology at the New School for Liberal Arts.
"I grew up painting. But I began more seriously after taking a college course about Buddhism and the Arts, where I started creating my large-scale works. I’ve taken just a few painting classes, so I find myself quite liberated by my lack of training, yet I am excited to see how my further studies in fine art will affect my work.
I work with the elements of Daoism and specifically the Wu Wei, the art of nondoing, and try to focus on the experience of painting rather than the work itself.
Each shape feels intentional yet just out of my grasp, a slippery in-betweenness, a giggle short of being too far or not enough.
Lastly, I am always inspired by my mother, a rare jewel with a mastery in the joy of curiosity. Thus, most of my pieces are done half-naked, dancing, with no paint shortage on all surfaces despite what my landlord asks of me."
~Lucy Villeneuve
