Gordon Sizelove "Luminous Flux" Acrylic on Canvas, Large Abstract Twin Vortex Painting in Orange, Carmel California Art, Original 40 X 25 Inches, 2024

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Two great whorls meet at the center of the canvas, the left one a blaze of orange, yellow, red and … Read more Two great whorls meet at the center of the canvas, the left one a blaze of orange, yellow, red and black, the right a cool spiral of navy, pale blue, white and pink, both built from long, feathered strokes that taper to a point. Where they touch, fire and ice press together along a clean seam. The strokes are fine and closely packed, so that from across the room each whorl glows as a single color, then separates into stripes as you step closer. Sizelove begins every work with a curving line and places each mark along it, and at this scale the drawn lines become sweeping currents.

Forty inches wide, it commands a living room wall above a sofa, a dining room sideboard or a bed. Orange and navy suit leather, walnut, indigo textiles and brass, and the white and pale blue calm the heat in modern interiors. It also fits a home office, a staircase wall or a loft, where its two whirling forms anchor a space and carry across a room.

Acrylic on Canvas, 40 x 25 x 1.5 in (101.6 × 63.5 × 3.8 cm). Unframed.

Sizelove begins each acrylic painting by drawing a curved, flowing pencil line across the canvas, mapping the proportions and movement of the composition. He then places spots and strokes of color along those lines to reinforce them, and keeps adding color until the canvas is full. Overlapping marks eclipse one another and mix new colors where they meet, and he varies each form on purpose so the surface feels natural. The result is a shallow, topographical field of color.

Gordon Sizelove (b. 1953, Boston) is a San Francisco painter who works in acrylic, pastel, charcoal and pencil. Raised in Springfield and Worcester, Massachusetts, he moved west in 1972 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, studying with Sam Tchakalian, Julius Hatofsky, Tom Holland and Robert Hudson, and earned his MFA in Painting in 1979.

After a teaching credential from San Francisco State University, he taught art in the San Francisco public schools for decades, including students with dyslexia, and has painted full time since retiring in 2014. His work, shown in a 2023 Inter-Society Color Council exhibition in Rochester, builds interlocking patterns from spots and strokes of color placed along a drawn, curving line, in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic structures and with a long interest in the consciousness of perception. He lives and works in San Francisco's South of Market district. See less