Virginia Dutton Abstract Ink and Acrylic Painting, “Torso” 2015

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Virginia Dutton Abstract Ink and Acrylic Painting, “Torso”
2015
Virginia Dutton, American

This large vertical painting is worked in black … Read more Virginia Dutton Abstract Ink and Acrylic Painting, “Torso”
2015
Virginia Dutton, American

This large vertical painting is worked in black ink and metallic gold acrylic on a white canvas ground, the paint poured, flung, and dripped rather than brushed. A broad angled bar at the top reads as a shoulder line, and from it two long dark columns descend the length of the canvas and gather into a dense pool of black across the lower edge, so that the whole resolves at a distance into a standing human torso.

Fine skeins of gold run down through and beside the black, doubling and crossing near the center of the lower half and catching the light against the matte ink. Splatter radiates outward from the heavier passages, and long thin lines travel horizontally across the field where the canvas was turned while the paint was still wet, so the drips run sideways and cut across the figure. Close to, the image dissolves entirely into gesture and the record of the artist’s movement; at a distance the body reassembles itself.

At five feet tall and under three feet wide this is made for a wall that needs height rather than width. It suits the tall narrow stretch beside a staircase, the space between two windows, a hallway seen end-on, or a spot above a console or a low chest where it can run up the wall uninterrupted. Black, white, and gold is about as easy a palette as a large painting can offer, so it will sit against almost any wall color and beside almost any furniture, modern or antique. It is also a good foil for pattern, holding its own in a room that already has a lot going on.

Medium
Ink and acrylic on canvas.

Dimensions
Height: 60 inches (152.4 cm)
Width: 34 inches (86.4 cm)
Depth: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Marks
Signed “Dutton” and dated 2015 on the right side of the stretcher.

Provenance
Private New York collection.

Condition
Good.

Historical Context
Virginia Dutton is a contemporary American painter. She relates her work directly to her practice in energy work, describing her painting as a means of sensing and focusing energy and giving it visible form in color and texture. Torso belongs to a body of work in which the gestural methods of mid-century abstraction, poured and dripped paint and the deliberate surrender of some control to gravity and chance, are turned toward the figure, the human form emerging from marks that were never drawn as outline.

Ref: NY8618-nnar See less