When Geoffrey Gersten was working in computer-aided design for Honeywell and Boeing he was bored. “I was looking for the word ‘electrolysis’ in an encyclopedia,” he relates, “and, while flipping through the pages, came across ‘etching.’ Its accompanying illustration was an etched copper plate from which a print was being pulled. It looked like a typical drafting drawing—so natural to me, so familiar, but one that had been shuffled. All of the lines were out of place, creating something entirely new and different—a work of art. An endeavor to create an image representing a deeper truth, which we specifically call art. This was my eureka moment in life.”
This Side Up, oil and acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 in.
He became an artist, teaching himself by studying the work of Dutch and Danish masters and their use of light and shadow. A chance encounter with the large-scale, black-and-white photographic portraits of Irving Penn shifted him into painting realism in black and white, monochromatic scenes of mid-century Arizona diners and gas stations, divers and cowboys.
Long Live Cowgirls, oil on birch panel, 20 x 16 in.
His references are his art books and historic photos. “I’ve spent a fortune on old photos and 1910 to 1940 rodeo postcards,” he confesses. The postcards are the inspiration for his exhibition Picture of a Cowboy, September 10 through 24 at Altamira Fine Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Each series of paintings seems a natural segue from one to the next. While painting in black and white he says, “I kept having this intuitive yearning to add color…but I didn’t know quite how. I like to leave room for intuition.” It seemed a simple step to paint his graceful female divers with a colorful background rather than the gray of his reference photo. Solid backgrounds and colorful bathing suits and caps on monochromatic figures also appeared on a field of colored polka dots. “I try to incorporate opposites in my work by juxtaposing traditional approaches to painting with more abstract expressionist mark-making,” he says. “My paintings celebrate the paradox of embracing experimentation while simultaneously being terrified of change.”
Picture of a Cowboy, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 in.
Looking at his collection of rodeo images, Gersten saw a parallel between the gracefulness of the divers and that of cowboys on bucking broncos. He selects the images of cowboys in which the photographer has captured the light in such a way that the images have volume. “The hard light creates three-dimensional form,” he explains. “They come to life.”
One day, he looked down at the drop cloth on the studio floor and remarked, “The random marks are so pretty!” He went out and bought 20 12-by-8-foot drop cloths, spread them on the floor, randomly applied color, and then cut out an 80-inch-square section (seam and all) as the canvas for his painting This Side Up. The meticulously rendered monochromatic horse and rider soar through the abstract essence of the rodeo arena. —
Altamira Fine Art 172 Center Street » Jackson, WY 83001 » (307) 739-4700 » www.altamiraart.com
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