The Walter Darby Bannard Archive

Curator's Choice (1973)

Catalog Statement: New Jersey State Council on the Arts, February, 1973.

When I am painting I "feel" with color, to express color just as a portrait painter expresses the character of his model. Most of the physical qualities of my paintings serve color expression.

The paintings are fairly large, because color comes across better when there is plenty of surface to spread across. As Clement Greenberg wrote, "More blue is simply bluer than less blue." The colors are pale, which avoids the natural mutual obstruction of areas of dark or intense color, and allows a sense of light and spreading paint to suffuse the canvas.

The two paintings in the show each have carefully adjusted near-complimentary colors. Ontario #2 has pale yellowish orange dispersed against a grayish-green field. Mirabelle's Pale Stream #1 has glossy grayish-green "bars" set on a field of flat and glossy reddish-oranges of various values.

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