The compelling painted dreams of Duncan Regehr
Artspeak - New York - By Ed McCormack- December 1995 - January 1996
One of the challenges facing narrative painters is how to maintain pictorial unity while conveying specific visual information. Duncan Regehr succeeds splendidly in creating paintings that are both visually harmonious and dramatically evocative in his solo show at Sylvia White Contemporary Artist' Services Gallery, 560 Broadway, from November 28 through January 6.
This exciting exhibition reveals how Regehr, also the author of a lavishly illustrated book, "The Dragon's Eye: An Artist's View," achieves a pictorial unity that eludes other story telling artists, by virtue of a flawless technique. Regehr builds up sensuous textures and vibrant color harmonies, layering oil impastoes over thinner glazes to create an overall luminosity that unites the entire composition.
This is a considerable
accomplishment, since Regehr's symbolic figure compositions are complex affairs,
enlivened by a remarkable array of nuances and details. Indeed, each figure has
the specific qualities of sharply defined character in an unfolding drama, as
they interact in the artist's boldly delineated, brilliantly lit, interior
spaces. The actions and attitudes of the figures evoke a host of intriguing
psycho-poetic allusions in paintings such as "The Fiddler," where a slyly
grinning violinist is flanked by two women -- one in the process of disrobing,
the other apparently weeping -- while a small boy (with whom the viewer
immediately identifies) peers from behind a wall.
In other paintings, such as "A matter of Choice," where several female figures of various sizes and ages gather pensively around a globe that could resemble a crystal ball, the cast of characters is larger, the composition more intricate, the action even more fascinatingly enigmatic. However, Regehr can be equally compelling in a much simpler composition, such as "Bellweather Virgin," a strikingly sensual redhaired, rosy skinned, nude with an elongated Modigliani torso, set against a delectably scumbled bright green ground. Like all of Duncan Regehr's paintings it reveals a painter at the apex of his formal and imaginative powers.