OPENING RECEPTION: 1ST THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012, FROM 5 - 8PM

Sullivan Goss – An American Gallery is proud to present JOSEPH GOLDYNE: WATERFALLS, the international debut of a breathtaking new body of paintings by critically acclaimed artist, Joseph Goldyne. For centuries, the waterfall has been an important symbol for innumerable cultures and religions. In Zen Buddhism, the waterfall represents changelessness vs impermanence--a constancy of form despite a perpetual change in content. In China, the falling water symbolizes femininity and the upward climbing rocks, masculinity--a yin and yang, if you will. Influenced as much by the abstract painters of the 1950s and 60s as by the Kyoto school scroll painters from 18th century Japan and the 19th century landscape sketches of artists like Frederic Church, Goldyne mines the traditions and styles of the East and West to create heroic new waterfall paintings. These six foot tall by eighteen inch wide images immediately convey intense height, weight, and magnitude, yet their reality exists only in Goldyne’s mind and on his canvases.

The fact that the waterfalls in Goldyne’s paintings are imaginary lends an oddly spiritual dimension to the story of their creation. Initially, the artist was intent on exploring painterly effects and columnar composition when he began to develop images that echoed Japanese and Chinese scroll paintings as well as the soak-stain abstractions of artists like Helen Frankenthaler. That the artist has painted and collected art for over forty-five years also seems to feed the triumphant aspect of the work.