OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY MAY 6TH 5-7PM. MAY 6 - JUNE 4
Color is the driving force of my paintings. The decisions I make are rooted in color relationships. Color defines space, implies form, projects and absorbs light, and resonates emotionally. A quiet awareness, intuition and feeling help me access a state of consciousness that results in freedom and spontaneity. Trusting and responding to impulses, such as color choice and brush marks or shapes, images emerge reflecting the forces of my internal world which remain mysterious and intangible. Inability to get there through language and thought keeps me coming back to painting.
The title of this show, Passing Notes, refers to notes on a musical instrument that get played between two primary notes in a riff— a note that can get played on the way to another note— or a transition note. Alongside painting, I play electric bass in a band with 3 close friends, and I feel a strong connection between the two activities. As I’ve been working, it occurs to me that colors can be felt as notes in music. Groups of colors can feel like chords, scales or intervals. Is it coincidence that Isaac Newton identified 7 colors in the prismatic spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet) and in western music systems there are 7 whole notes (A,B,C,D,E,F,G)? Of course you can divide both of those more than seven times, creating secondary colors and semitones, and beyond. We create these systems to help us talk about what we hear and see. The point for me, is the reverberations between the two. I have always been devoted to both art and music, and they have always been intertwined. I listen while I paint, and I am sure whatever it is that I’m listening to is impacting my painting. Many abstract artists before me have made this connection, which underscores the compelling force of this view. The language we use can almost always be interchanged. Rhythm, tone, composition, space, articulation are all examples of words used for both activities. Bassists I admire often speak of adding color to a song.
Accessing an unknown space in my work that is completely non-verbal and not thought driven is what continues to draw me into the practice of painting. I follow impulses, and trust my intuition. Painting is a free space where anything can happen. My response to what is happening on the surfaces of canvases and within the picture space leads me to an understanding of where I am, who I am, what values I hold, and how those connect to the influences that reveal who I am becoming. In this understanding of what drives me to paint, each painting is a passing note, moving toward the next note in the riff.
-Sean Greene
Sean Greene was born in San Francisco in 1972, and from age 7, raised in Connecticut and Vermont. He moved to New York City in 1992, and received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in 1996. In 1998 Sean moved to Massachusetts and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004, where he was awarded a 3 year teaching associateship. He lives and works in Florence, Massachusetts with middle grade and children's writer Molly B. Burnham, and their two children Adelaide and Georgia.
Sean exhibits his art on a regular basis. Highlights include two person shows with Steve Theberge at Pulp and with Lisa Rybovich Crallè at LAND AND SEA, Oakland, and 3 person shows at Brian Morris Gallery in New York (with Russell Tyler and Matt Phillips), and Geoffrey Young Gallery in Massachusetts (with Gary Petersen and Vince Contarino). In 2014 he was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and has also received grants from the Somerville and Northampton Arts Councils, the Artists Resource Trust. His work is in private collections in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and France, as well as the corporate collection of Neiman Marcus, and the University Museum of Contemporary Art in Amherst.