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REBECCA NEWMAN

GALLERY

DISCONTINUITIES. This series represented my leap back into color painting. I began the work with a purpose of showing how isolated and separated we all were as individuals in a pandemic quarantined world. But as I developed what I was doing, I discovered a style of multiple linkages and new associations, a sort of counter-punch to the trauma all around me, around everyone.

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DISCONTINUITIES. This series represented my leap back into color painting. I began the work with a purpose of showing how isolated and separated we all were as individuals in a pandemic quarantined world. But as I developed what I was doing, I discovered a style of multiple linkages and new associations, a sort of counter-punch to the trauma all around me, around everyone.

RESTRINGING. In this series, I again used the sgraffito technique, and its negative space quality, but in a very different way. I allowed each part of the drawing to suggest the next part in a free-form way, with the only requirement being that one end of the chain would latch back to the beginning. There were no "models" for these panels, only what I wanted to invent.

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RESTRINGING. In this series, I again used the sgraffito technique, and its negative space quality, but in a very different way. I allowed each part of the drawing to suggest the next part in a free-form way, with the only requirement being that one end of the chain would latch back to the beginning. There were no "models" for these panels, only what I wanted to invent.

Bird Beak Scissors #3.jpg

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DISSECTING TOOLS. After my father died, I got to open his doctor's bag for the first time in my life. This bag had always been forbidden for me to touch as being full of objects too dangerous for a child, or even a teenager. So, now, I could examine my father's tools and consider them as subjects for my work, an artist's work not a doctor's.

DOMESTICA

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DOMESTICA. After my illness, my home and studio became a larger part of my world than they had been ever before. Objects I selected from this milieu—the kitchen, the bath, the laundry room—all auditioned to be models for my new work as I fought against my fear that I could never paint again. I arranged these “models” into conversations with each other and recorded their interaction.

EARLY PAINTINGS

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EARLY PAINTINGS. This section covers a number of gallery exhibits I had during the years prior to 2007. Some of the pieces are clearly representational, while others are more abstract. Most of the series are accompanied by lectures I gave at the galleries, which are posted in the Writing section of this site. These works were influenced by what I was seeing and reading at the time.

COLLAGES AND OBJECTS

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COLLAGES AND OBJECTS. Throughout my art-making, I have been interested in collages and physical objects. This section displays the longest duration of artworks, with series from my days as a student through this past year, and with numerous stops in between. A number of different approaches but the same overriding interest in manipulating non-representational pieces and images.

RECONSTRUCTIONS

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RECONSTRUCTIONS. When I moved to Los Angeles, it seemed that there were construction sites everywhere, so I used my camera to record them. But later, when the finished building that resulted always led to a mundane result, I decided to draw upon my original construction photographs in order to revise the outcome according to my own imaginings.

TRANSFORMATIONS

TRANSFORMATIONS. In Spain and Connecticut, the visual tonalities, the light and the dark, had been very smooth and continuous, giving off a sort of silvery light, a delicacy of texture. By contrast, when I came to California, the brilliant light all around me pushed my images toward a more contrasty, harsher rendering. This kind of light also, oddly, seemed to encourage misperceptions on the part of the viewer, so that at first glance a tall, skinny Cypress tree against a white wall suggested a fissure caused by an earthquake. Or the landmark Cinerama Dome conjured an alien ship’s landing on Sunset Boulevard. The Transformations, as I decided to call them for my exhibition, are all represented by “unaltered photographs.” These photographs allowed me to create a display of my reaction to the unique qualities of my new city and led to my second gallery exhibition.

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EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS

EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS. Returning from Europe, I had many B&W photo images shot with my Rolleiflex on 2 ¼ film. When I moved to Los Angeles and decided to not attend an MFA program, I threw available funds into creating a darkroom in our apartment’s second bathroom. This allowed me to go through all of the negatives I had been shot both in the United States and Europe. At the same time, I heard about a possibility to show my photographs in Atlantic City, N.J., so I jumped at it. Anything to get my first exhibit up. This opportunity motivated me to actually select and print the images that are preserved here.

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