Artist Will Barnet at Alexandre Gallery
I first learned about artist Will Barnet in 2011 when The National Academy Museum in NYC had a 100 year retrospective for him. He was able to attend the opening and visited it several more times, dying at 101 in Nov 2012. I loved his stylistic, flat paintings and know his work through that exhibit, a second one in the same Museum in 2015, and two gallery shows at Alexandre Gallery at 724 5th Avenue (Current exhibit closing March 7th). I sketched and painted only one corner of his painting called Three Generations to remember my visit to the exhibit.
At one of the Museum shows I learned that he used vellum to sketch on, and used additional layers of vellum to further simplify the images in sequence. I always meant to try that, but forgot about it over the recent years.
In the gallery exhibit they had several examples of his vellum drawings, side-by-side with the finished painting. I loved the way that his wife Elena became a painting in the painting, and his arm went around her and into the painting.
