Marc Zimmerman "Mid Century Modern Ii" Oil on Canvas, Abstract Botanical Painting in Black, Carmel California Art, Original 30 X 36 Inches, 2024

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Against a near-black ground sits a cluster of cut-paper shapes: a long cornflower-blue form tipped with two rust-orange buds, a … Read more Against a near-black ground sits a cluster of cut-paper shapes: a long cornflower-blue form tipped with two rust-orange buds, a jagged white leaf, slate-green fronds and a rounded patch of saffron behind. At the center a red spiral ringed in black turns like a snail shell or a seed. The paint is dragged on in dry, chalky strokes that leave the weave of the canvas showing, and fine dark lines run through the blue like stems. Each form is a single clean plane of color. The mid-century leanings of the title show in the pure, flat shapes and the clean edges Zimmerman learned from woodcut.

Vertical and compact at three feet tall, it works in an entry, a stairwell or beside a window. The black ground sets off white walls, and the blue, saffron and gray-green suit walnut credenzas, tapered legs and brass lamps from the same era as the title. Over a console with a tall vase, or in a study with leather and wood, it gives a pared-back room one dramatic focal point.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 x 1.5 in (76.2 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm).

Marc Zimmerman paints in oil on stretched canvas, building his scenes from flat, clearly outlined shapes of saturated color. Years of woodcut printmaking gave him crisp edges, simplified forms and a feeling for texture, while Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin shaped his lush botanical worlds, and painting trips to Kauai fed his Jungle series. Self-taught in oil since 1989, he lets a harmony of related colors carry each composition, then adds one unexpected accent.

Marc Zimmerman is a painter and ceramic sculptor based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He began as a potter, working at the Pot Shop, a studio pottery in Venice Beach, from the mid-1960s, then studied watercolor in Southern California and woodcut printing in Santa Barbara before teaching himself oil painting in 1989.

He ran his own painting gallery in Carmel from 1997 to 2002 and was given a retrospective of his oils at the Pacific Grove Art Center in 2012. His Jungle series grew from painting trips to Kauai, with Rousseau and Gauguin as early guides. After forty years of painting he returned to clay with his Garden Totems, hand-built, stacked and glazed one element at a time, often without a sketch. See less