Gordon Sizelove "Pastoral Eyescape I" Acrylic on Canvas, Large Abstract Pointillist Landscape in Green, Bay Area California Art, 2024

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Small round strokes of emerald, kelly green, mint, black green and lime cover the large canvas in a dense, shimmering … Read more Small round strokes of emerald, kelly green, mint, black green and lime cover the large canvas in a dense, shimmering field, the darker greens gathering like shade between the paler ones. The strokes shift slightly in direction from one area to the next, forming soft swells across the surface like wind moving through a meadow. Sizelove writes that the topographical space in his work echoes the organic topography of the back of the eye, and the shallow, textured field here has that feeling, a landscape reduced to pure sight. The title joins pasture and perception, and the canvas is calm, rich and full of fine detail.

At forty by thirty inches this green canvas has the scale for a living room sofa wall, a dining room, a library or a bedroom. It looks natural with white walls, pale oak, linen, leather and rattan, and it deepens rooms with dark green or navy furniture and brass. It sits well alongside houseplants, books and ceramics, and it can take a large, quiet corner of an open-plan space.

Acrylic on Canvas, 40 x 30 x 1.5 in (101.6 × 76.2 × 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