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review of Staats Fasoldt Exhibit
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Staats Fasoldt
May 31, 2011, 7:41:55 PM5/31/11
to
Staats Fasoldt's
watercolors at ASK
The steeples, houses, and
streetscapes depicted in Staats Fasoldt's watercolors,
on display at the Arts Society of Kingston,
at 97 Broadway, look familiar: most of
the scenes are from Kingston, including the
immediately recognizable landmark of City Hall.
Fasoldt leaves out the details, interpreting
the monumental forms of buildings
in sunlight with an immediacy and simplicity
that walks the line between representation and
abstraction. He translates reality into a
language of crisp shapes and liquid
washes, applied in bold and delicate
tones of neutral gray-browns.
A painting of a row of fine
houses on President's Place, for
example, relies just as much on "One Side or the
the white paper as it does on tonal
washes to describe the play of space.
The repeating shapes of gables are a single, zigzag-
ging form silhouetted - against the pale bluish sky,
while a few slivers of white in the foreground sug-
gest sunlight falling on a lawn. Windows are delin-
eated through a few bravura brush strokes.
With their attentiveness to light, moody, dark-
brown tonalities and architectural shapes, the paint-
ings carry echoes of John Sargent's watercolors of
Venice. While it's lovely to associate Kingston with
that romantic city, Fasoldt's work lacks Sargent's su-
perficial splashiness and illustrative detail; the sim-
plicity of his brushwork is more akin to that of a
master Japanese Sumi-E painter. His taste for the
vernacular connects him to the tradition of the Ash-
can school: fences, a row of buildings viewed from
the back, curbs, parked cars, and a jumble of plain
houses in the Rondout are the key components of
his jazz-like compositions.
Unlike so much of traditional American paint-
ing, however, there's nothing heavy handed or drab
about Fasoldt's art. He paints tone poems, whose
smoldering bursts of red in the dark-gray washes,
complemented by calming planes of green, laid thin
and transparent on the white paper, express a surface
tension reminiscent of Cezanne. Yet each relates to
a specific scene: we feel a start of recognition, even
as we are seduced by the sheer beauty of his pitch-
perfect art.
"I respond to color in a musical way,"the Wood-
stock-based artist explained by phone. He added
that there's a "fine balance doing something that's
simple and yet doesn't read at all. I still want it be a
place. It's not a complete synthesis, but a reduction."
He said the paintings that appear to be the simplest and
most spontaneous actually were the most pre-meditated,
involving multiple sketches and photos.
Few slid off the brush in one fortuitous sitting;
the watercolor made at Wilson State Park is the ex-
ception. The show also includes his lyrical paintings
of Catskill waterfalls and views of the Shawangunk
Ridge, as well as large-scale still-lifes that were done
as demonstrations in the popular class he has taught
for 27 years at the Woodstock School of Art.
"Many are called and few are chosen," Fasoldt
said of the selection process for these single-session
exercises. The still-lifes are masterful, minimalist
compositions that revel in the expressive power of
paint and bare paper to suggest much more than
they convey. Perhaps that accounts for the jolt of his
art: his sign language builds a direct bridge to the viewers
imagination.
lynn woods
kingston times may 26 2011
watercolors at ASK
The steeples, houses, and
streetscapes depicted in Staats Fasoldt's watercolors,
on display at the Arts Society of Kingston,
at 97 Broadway, look familiar: most of
the scenes are from Kingston, including the
immediately recognizable landmark of City Hall.
Fasoldt leaves out the details, interpreting
the monumental forms of buildings
in sunlight with an immediacy and simplicity
that walks the line between representation and
abstraction. He translates reality into a
language of crisp shapes and liquid
washes, applied in bold and delicate
tones of neutral gray-browns.
A painting of a row of fine
houses on President's Place, for
example, relies just as much on "One Side or the
the white paper as it does on tonal
washes to describe the play of space.
The repeating shapes of gables are a single, zigzag-
ging form silhouetted - against the pale bluish sky,
while a few slivers of white in the foreground sug-
gest sunlight falling on a lawn. Windows are delin-
eated through a few bravura brush strokes.
With their attentiveness to light, moody, dark-
brown tonalities and architectural shapes, the paint-
ings carry echoes of John Sargent's watercolors of
Venice. While it's lovely to associate Kingston with
that romantic city, Fasoldt's work lacks Sargent's su-
perficial splashiness and illustrative detail; the sim-
plicity of his brushwork is more akin to that of a
master Japanese Sumi-E painter. His taste for the
vernacular connects him to the tradition of the Ash-
can school: fences, a row of buildings viewed from
the back, curbs, parked cars, and a jumble of plain
houses in the Rondout are the key components of
his jazz-like compositions.
Unlike so much of traditional American paint-
ing, however, there's nothing heavy handed or drab
about Fasoldt's art. He paints tone poems, whose
smoldering bursts of red in the dark-gray washes,
complemented by calming planes of green, laid thin
and transparent on the white paper, express a surface
tension reminiscent of Cezanne. Yet each relates to
a specific scene: we feel a start of recognition, even
as we are seduced by the sheer beauty of his pitch-
perfect art.
"I respond to color in a musical way,"the Wood-
stock-based artist explained by phone. He added
that there's a "fine balance doing something that's
simple and yet doesn't read at all. I still want it be a
place. It's not a complete synthesis, but a reduction."
He said the paintings that appear to be the simplest and
most spontaneous actually were the most pre-meditated,
involving multiple sketches and photos.
Few slid off the brush in one fortuitous sitting;
the watercolor made at Wilson State Park is the ex-
ception. The show also includes his lyrical paintings
of Catskill waterfalls and views of the Shawangunk
Ridge, as well as large-scale still-lifes that were done
as demonstrations in the popular class he has taught
for 27 years at the Woodstock School of Art.
"Many are called and few are chosen," Fasoldt
said of the selection process for these single-session
exercises. The still-lifes are masterful, minimalist
compositions that revel in the expressive power of
paint and bare paper to suggest much more than
they convey. Perhaps that accounts for the jolt of his
art: his sign language builds a direct bridge to the viewers
imagination.
lynn woods
kingston times may 26 2011
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