June 03 - June 27

opening June 04, 2-8PM
Howard Podeswa

"Caravaggio Breakfast" - new paintings

My work often is triggered by a change in physical surroundings. This series began with a studio move to 30 Duncan St., when I began to look outside my window for material I could use to construct my paintings. As my eye settled on particularities, I selected and recombined these details to create my own versions of the view outside, piecing them together in a way that resembles the order I noticed them, while weeding out extraneous details - something I have been doing since I began painting the urban landscape. The wild card in each piece is the art-historical sample.
This use of other artists’ work is an evolution of what I have been doing in previous shows. Previously, I focused on analyzing the inner structure and mechanics of art-historical paintings (Las Meninas and The Night Watch).  In the current work, I’m more interested in combining the distinct visual particularities of different periods and places.  This has become, for me, an engrossing game.  The things I notice in a masterwork are similar to those I notice in the urban landscape when I look out the window – not iconic aspects but distinct visual particularities that others might miss but that define the masterwork or the urban scene.

Howard Podeswa