Robert Lange Studios will be a flurry of activity through the month of April as local landscape artist JB Boyd works from his temporary studio inside the Queen Street gallery. The exhibit Length opens Friday, April 2, but Boyd will begin working in the gallery Monday, March 29th by completing the centerpiece of the show, a sweeping 270º panoramic oil painting depicting a tidal flat. The public is welcome to come and watch the painting progress or view the artist at work via a live webcam on the gallery’s website. Boyd will talk to the public about his work during the opening on Friday, April 2 from 5:00 -9PM. RLS is located at 2 Queen Street in downtown Charleston, SC.
Boyd’s contemporary realist style has received great praise in Charleston, winning him the Michael and Donna Griffith Lowcountry Artist’s Award last year. For this new body of work, Boyd paints from an extensive collection of photographs taken throughout his travels and around Goat Island, SC where the artist lives. This series captures the unique quality of light as well as inspiring horizon line views.
“There is a subtle nature to these paintings,” says Boyd. “They are consciously understated through elaborate means and, if at all possible, are made minimal by the level of detail. I know this is contrary to simple reason, but I think the most interesting aspects of art lie in the intersections created where contradictions meet.”
Boyd enjoys building on the elongated shape, intent on how the paintings create a space outside of the edges of the work. This series in particular captures the transitory moments that are the mosaic a lifetime and stretch them across the lifespan of a painting. His style is a contemporary update of the American landscape tradition and continually exceeds the expectations of collectors.
Kate and Paul Houck, two of Boyd’s collector say, “It doesn’t matter who you are or what type of art you profess to favor, it is impossible to walk by one of JB’s paintings without stopping. What catches you is the expanse and depth of what he is able to capture in what is typically such a relatively small and sometimes quirky space.”
No detail is overlooked in the preparation of his paintings, from the handcrafted panels on which he paints to the frames housing the work. One of the pieces for the show, “Post Traumatic Stress” is an aerial view of the water. The 3-by-12 inch oil painting sits just off the wall in one of Boyd’s customary floating frames and depicts each and every ripple of water and blade of marsh grass.
“By focusing on the individual blades of grass and the myriad of shapes they create, you begin to get an idea of the feeling of billions of blades flowing with the breeze,” Boyd says, “These paintings are simply slivers of images, and hopefully with careful composition choices, the elements included in the image make one think about what is not referenced.”
Boyd has shown work in both New York and Los Angeles before joining RLS Gallery in 2004. Boyd studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He has been painting seriously since he was sixteen.
The exhibition will hang from March 29 though April 26, 2010, and a festive reception, featuring music, wine, and hors d’oeuvres, is open to the public on April 2, 5:00-9PM.
