Works by Stephen Bambury and Jude Rae

George Lawson talks about Exhibition 12 at his gallery:

In room for painting: Stephen Bambury

For the 12th show in the room for painting I’m thrilled to present recent work by prominent New Zealand painter Stephen Bambury. I first met Stephen in San Francisco in the early ’80s. We later spent time together in Paris while he was there as a Moet Chandon fellow. Stephen had by then well established his mature expression, an unlikely collision of the sensual, flowing qualities of acrylic paint with the voluntary constraints of a constructivist mode. The terse vernacular he had developed has now turned into a decades-long probe of the possibilities, both as motif and armature, of the cross. Using this most laden of social symbols, which also happens to be the device of choice of many formalists, he deftly manages an art that is neither symbolic nor formal. What he achieves is more akin to an ethos, a balance that straddles rigor and play. His painting is trans-mogrification in reverse; it renders an unaccountable, intuitive spirit as corporeal fact through a plastic medium on a hard surface, color up against an edge. That Bambury is able to hold a whole wall or a whole room like a deer in headlights with even the most modestly scaled painting, is evidence of how central this ethos is to our values, both our organizing principles and our aspirations to unbounded freedom. Painting is good when it promotes this freedom; it is at its best when it shows us a way to achieve it. I would like to thank Andrew Jensen of Jensen Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, for his generosity and help with this exhibition.

In room for paper: Jude Rae

Exhibition 12 in the room for paper pairs a second artist from down under, Australian painter Jude Rae, showing her recent still life watercolors. I came upon Rae’s work initially in reproduction while perusing the Andrew Jensen Gallery web site, stumbling across an oil painting of a demure arrangement of propane tanks and red camper bottles. Even at screen resolution, the image and its handling knocked me off my chair. Rae seemed like a modern day Morandi, except that to the Italian master’s quiet laser focus, she was bringing a cultivated sense of humor and a deadpan nod to our current predicament. In another painting she worked a figure from Hopper in a room from Vermeer bathed in a contemporary light both painters would have envied, and all done without a trace of sarcasm. To the contrary, there is something loving in her work, like the feeling you get when you watch your kids eat. As is true for many of the artists I follow these days, Rae seems to understand all of art history as her inheritance and birthright, a fortune to spend as she pleases. In her new watercolors she exhibits an ease and an intimacy that again sheds a fresh, contemporary light on well- established conventions, and feels like a fortune well spent.

Exhibition Dates: November 12 through December 12, 2009
Opening: November 12th from 5:30-7:30 pm.

George Lawson Gallery
49 Geary, 2nd Fl
San Francisco CA 94108
T: 415.772.0977

Gallery Hours: Tu – Sa: 10:30am – 6:00pm

Press release and images provided by room for painting room for paper gallery.

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