Three Dudes
Shane Tolbert, Mark Greenwalt, Frank X. Tolbert 2
It’s been just a little over a year since I saw Shane Tolbert’s art in Houston. Now he’s moved from the smallish back gallery at McClain to their larger front gallery. I have no idea if this is a promotion in his status at the gallery, or just a practical move.
If you saw his earlier paintings, one feature that you may recall was his use of parallel stripes in his abstractions. Not so much straight-edge, mechanical stripes like, say, Daniel Buren. Tolbert’s stripes were much more hand-made.
In these two paintings, he moves from stripes to cylinders. They remind me a little of Fernand Leger or Nathan Green.
Here Tolbert commits to both stripes and cylinders. Too much? He’s okay with it.
The show also includes drawings and portraits as well. But I wanted to focus on the paintings with stripes and tubes.
One of my earliest posts on this newsletter was about artist Mark Greenwalt. Greenwalt teaches art at College of the Mainland and the Glassel School. Greenwalt’s art hasn’t changed much in the 13 years I’ve been observing it. He has an obsession with old drawing—Rennaissance and Baroque era. His work feels like what Annibale Carracci would draw after being dosed with LSD. That obsession continues to this day.
These four feature figures are floating in the picture plane, never touching the edge of the image. Greenwalt physicaly constrcted these panels so that they can be hung upside down, if that is your preference.
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