Gary Paller is an abstract artist based out of Los Angeles whose powerful organic abstractions contain exquisite nuanced forms that play off of each other creating new subdued forms as they overlap. He received a BFA and MFA from UCLA, and studied with artists William Brice, Lee Mullican, and Charles Garabedian. The artist incorporates several mediums including acrylic, ink, and graphite on paper and canvas. Paller has been interested in artworks containing simple organic shapes since childhood and considers Calder, Arp, and Miro to be influences. I find his work reminiscent of abstract expressionist William Baziotes, but Paller uses considerably softer lines and smoother color fields. The main element of his artistic process that I’m drawn to is the layering of forms and the beautiful edges that are created. My technique is a lot more battered and chaotic. I ferociously use my feet to make a new layer of thick acrylic and pumice over the previous layer. My newer pieces such as Leviathan, Kettle, and Acorn certainly have a more organic quality than my older signature style paintings such as Shiver, Fairbanks, and Buffalo. Paller’s forms are applied more deliberately and comfortably lay on top of each other revealing a ghostly image of the forms that lie underneath. He suggests the forms could be living organisms interacting with each other, similar to what you might see under a microscope.
Curator Cynthia Penna had this to say about Paller’s art: “The beauty of Paller’s pictorial composition lies in the fact that it is purified of any other component that obstacles or distracts” the eye from the movement of the form. Paller’s research aims at the purity of the form and its movement in space, determined by the colour and by the relationship between colour and colour, or between colour and line.”
Check out some of Gary Paller’s artworks I have selected below, and check out more of his paintings, prints, and drawings at his official website which can be found at garypaller.com
7 by Gary Paller | acrylic on canvas 21.5″ x 28.5″ 2016