
My love for abstract painting goes back to before I began painting as a teenager; my earliest exposure was from a Life Magazine article on Pollack's paintings that left me spellbound; I was about ten years old. Later I had frequent visits to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to view the work of Modernists, Fauvists and regional painters. My first paintings and drawings were of abstracted landscapes, figures that often incorporated architecture. Painting for me has always been about how to approach and develop these things I was seeing into the conceptual and intuitive; moving between and around them or building upon a thesis.
The recent works are a synthesis, a bringing together of line, form and color to create a landscape / architectural hybrid that moves in and out of landscape. Often linear or intuitive but focused on the same conceptual foundation. Painted spontaneously I build my compositions from memory or earlier drawings and sketches, incorporating mathematical shapes and forms, the triangle, square, circle and forms built around those basics; components of architecture and habitat. I enjoy interacting with the surface of the work with scraping, carving out line and working with knife, brush and fingers, all tools that bring me to a place that feels correct, complete and most important an excitement of the senses.
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Masteller is a conceptual painter: he unites fragments of the urban environment--carefully chosen from a repertoire of photographs--to create a kind of picture puzzle, that is, a representation that conveys the unreal look of every convincing representation even as it precisely realizes reality. The empirical is subsumed in the enigmatic, making for a sense of uncanny truthfulness, however factually bizarre the picture finally seems.
Donald Kuspit. American Art Critic and Poet.
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While distinctly contemporary, Masteller's canvases betray the influence of those early pioneers who recognized placeStateCalifornia's singular fusion of land and light as fruitful ground for a more meditative approach.
For Barry Masteller as well as for his historical predecessors, the landscape serves as a conduit to unknown worlds and hidden dimensions.
Masteller's works remind that paintings not only represent but also exist as physical landscapes. They reflect a keen understanding of paintings as three-dimensional terrains, formed by sedimented layers of pigment, binder and varnish, and built up, like geological formations, over the course of time.
Marcelle Polednik. Director / Curator Milwaukee Museum of Art.
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PAINTINGS
A selection of current 6 x 6 inch. (15.24 x 15.24 cm) mixed media paintings on canvas.
Available for onsite purchase, click on grid to go to page.
Suspended Moments. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Positive Space. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Connected Segments. 36 x 24 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Stationary Waves. 36 x 40 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Highway 12-2. 24 x 37 in. acrylic on panel. 2021
Time Lines. 48 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Body Language. 60 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2018 / 2021
Second Nature. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2021
Articulation. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2021
Highway 12. 24 x 37 in. acrylic on panel. 2021
Journey Home. 66 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Story Board. 50 x 40 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
Alluvium. 66 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Chance and Circumstance. 66 x 66 in. acrylic on canvas 2018
Together. 66 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
What is Left is What Remains. 30 x 26.5 in. oil and acrylic on birch panel. 2019
Requiem. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas 2018
Red Line. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2018 / 2021
Between a Mesa and a Sand Dune. 66 x 66 in. acrylic on canvas 2018
Azur Passage. 66 x 54 in. acrylic and graphite on canvas. 2021
Reflections. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
Elements. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas 2018
Close To Home. 30 x 26.5 in. oil and acrylic on birch panel. 2019
Stone Water Air. 30 x 26.5 in. oil and acrylic on birch panel. 2019
Any Moment Now. 36 x 24 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Everything is Important. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Green Line. 66 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Rift Valley Two. 54 x 30 in. acrylic on panel. 2021
Lavender. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
More Than Whats Left. 66 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Convergence. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
On a Clear Day. 48 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Night Shift. 66 x 54 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Pleiades. 48 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2019
Tucked Away. 50 x 40 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
Sequential Navigation. 54 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
Highground Elegies. 36 x 40 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Moon Stories. 40 x 36 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Gateway. 36 x 24 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Balancing Act. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Moon Stories. 40 x 36 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Connectivity. 36 x 24 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Terms And Conditions. 36 x 24 in. mixed media on linen. 2022
Nowhere To Go But Up. 36 x 24 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Virtual Exhibition of Recent Work.
TIME LINES
Rift Valley One. 54 x 30 in. acrylic on panel. 2021
Waves of Reason and Delight.. 30 x 20 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
Zero Gravity. 14 x 14 in. acrylic on panel. 2021
Run Skip Jump. 14 x 14 in. acrylic on panel. 2021
Culmination. 30 x 30 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Elevation. 48 x 54 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Free Space. 48 x 54 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Skyrocket. 36 x 60 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
For The Moment. 36 x 40 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Turn Around. 48 x 54 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
Blue and Gold. 48 x 54 in. mixed media on canvas. 2022
From a Distance. 60 x 58 in. acrylic on canvas. 2021
OK. 19.5 x 17.5 x 1 in. mixed media on aluminum. 2020
Counter Measures. 19.5 x 17.5 x 1 in. mixed media on aluminum. 2020
Still Navigation. 19.5 x 17.5 x 1 in. mixed media on aluminum. 2020
Minute by Minute. 19.5 x 17.5 x 1 in. mixed media on aluminum. 2020
All text and images contained on this site copyright: Barry Masteller 2022
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