Sky Lights
Vermont perspectives inspired Dartmouth artist Stephen Remick's abstract landscapes
Published in The New Bedford Standard-Times on December 1, 2006
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-06/12-01-06/01living.htm
Dartmouth artist Stephen Remick paints
those times in nature when light is at its most dramatic. His canvases describe
sunrise, sunset, midday brightness, moon glow, blizzards and lightning storms.
He chooses strong colors that express those heightened moments — golden yellow,
hot pink, electric blue, often contrasted with black — to illuminate the large
abstract shapes that are the characters in his paintings.
The 45-year-old Mr. Remick grew up in
Vermont. He spent long hours as a child playing outdoors, observing the dense
woodlands and open skies that would eventually inspire him as an artist. His
first landscapes out of college were realistic studies of forest views. But
when he realized that his real interest was the effect of the sky on the land,
he simplified the individual trees into one mass floating in the center of the
canvas. This way, his colors could tell the story.
While Mr. Remick says he wants his
landscapes to look natural, "almost like they grew," his process is
complex and constantly evolving. He uses fluid acrylics and multiple layers of
gel mixtures, sometimes as many as 50, to create the lush surfaces in his
paintings. His color mixing is "trial and error," often the result of
the tones that create themselves on the canvas as the layers build up. He also
allows random drips to act as defining lines that emphasize the large forms in
his compositions.
When it comes to painting, Mr. Remick
says he "can't not do it." But he started on the path to this
impractical profession with practical intentions. He first earned a degree in
architecture from Vermont Technical College, then moved on to the Swain School
of Design in New Bedford with plans for a degree in graphic design. It was at
Swain that Mr. Remick found the two loves of his life — his future wife, Anne,
who was a fellow student, and his unexpected career as a fine artist. He applied himself with care to his
design courses, but felt more stimulated by the painting and drawing classes he
was taking as electives. After two years, he made the decision to follow his
heart and change his major to painting.
Mr. Remick says the "bohemian
atmosphere" at Swain had a big impact on him. He was influenced by the
sense of camaraderie among the students, the spirit of free expression
encouraged by the teachers, and the ornate beauty of the historic buildings on
campus. He completed his studies with a bachelor of fine arts degree.
After he graduated from Swain, Mr.
Remick's architectural training landed him a plum job at Jordan Marsh in Boston
with a good salary and benefits. But the 9-to-5 life didn't suit him, and he
left to work for a friend from Swain who was wallpapering and painting houses
on the SouthCoast. When the friend moved on, Mr. Remick
stayed with the business. In 1986, he founded Remick Painting and Paperhanging
Inc., specializing in faux and decorative finishes for residential and
commercial settings. This work gave him the chance to combine his experience as
a contractor with his background as a painter.
As his company flourished, Mr. Remick
found his voice as an artist during a residency at ArtWorks! in New Bedford
from 2000 to 2002. In his Dover Street studio, he came upon two discoveries
that altered the representational landscapes he had been painting up to that
time. He realized that he was most drawn to the areas where two colors or two
shapes met on the canvas, so he began to focus on those intersections by
enlarging small sections of his formal landscapes. He also realized that he could
unify his compositions by depicting one overall weather pattern like a
snowstorm.
When Mr. Remick's ArtWorks! residency
was over, he began painting in his garage at home. The switch to a larger
studio gave him physical and mental space to expand, so he stretched larger
canvases to create more imposing scenes. His palette became bolder, too, with
paintings of stormy blue or sunny yellow taking their place alongside the
quieter umbers and whites of the earlier snow-based works.
In 2003, Ms. Remick heard about the
planned conversion of 21 Cove St. in New Bedford from manufacturing spaces into
artist studios. He soon joined a group of other artists who were dividing up
one of the building's 7,000-square-foot floors. The change of environment again
influenced his work, allowing him to work on even larger canvases, some up to
10 feet long. The sunny environment, brightened by the huge windows in the
mill, urged increasingly complex color combinations into his paintings.
Today Mr. Remick balances his time between
his business, his studio and his family. He lives in Dartmouth with his wife,
Anne Carrozza-Remick, a mural painter, and their two children, Theo, 14, and
Tess, 8. His home has a view of the woods that recalls his childhood in
Vermont, still providing imagery for his current work. A lightning storm,
viewed last summer out the back window with his son, inspired "Watching
Lightning with Theo," a dark-blue and white work-in-progress that sits on
the easel in his studio today.
Mr. Remick's favorite professor at the
Swain School, David Smith, trained with famed teacher and painter Hans Hoffman,
who himself had studied with the legendary French artist Henri Matisse. Mr.
Remick says he is honored to be a part of that legacy of dedicated artists, and
dreams of being a link in the chain through art history that joins one
generation of artists to the next.
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