Larry Dinkin ~ Painting to Silkscreen at Lyman Allyn Art Museum

Thursday, 14 June 2007 00:06

New London, CT - Lyman Allyn Art Museum announces two new exhibitions, Larry Dinkin: Painting to Silkscreen, an Interpretive Process opening on Friday, July 13, 2007 and on view through September 23, 2007. Born in 1943, Larry Dinkin expressed interest in art at an early age, taking drawing classes at Pratt Institute in his teens, graduating from City College of New York in 1965 and continuing his art education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Master teacher Frederick Taubes’ painting techniques were influential in Dinkin’s artistic development.

As a student, Dinkin had studied figurative painting. In his early thirties, he began to explore landscape and in 1992, with the painting Landscape of Structure from a Dream, he created an image that used a landscape format but was constructed with abstract elements. From this point forward Dinkin’s oeuvre would be non-objective realism. His paintings would have elements of realism -- space, light and color -- but would no longer be derivative. His paintings form the basis for his silk-screens for which an elaborate process is employed, using over 90 separate screens and transparent oil-based inks.

Larry Dinkin: Painting to Silkscreen, an Interpretive Process takes the viewer on a visual journey between the two media. The vividly bold paintings and prints seem familiar and yet distant; perhaps a memory from a dream when one is jarred awake. Within the brilliant colors and dense brushstrokes, one can almost see a structure, a landform, something recognizable, but not then quite.

Dinkin says of his work, “The images depict a personal universe—distilled landscapes bound only by their own reality. They strive for the flickering ambiguity of paint to dreamy vision, held fast within a structure that is both descriptive and dimensional.”

Larry Dinkin: Painting to Silkscreen, an Interpretive Process originally opened at the Flint Institute of Art in Flint, Michigan and then traveled to the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio before showing at Lyman Allyn Art Museum. His paintings and silk-screens are in the collections of more than forty museums and are represented in many private and corporate collections. Dinkin’s paintings and works on paper owe a debt to the groundwork laid by the abstract artists of the “New York School.”

The New York School: Works from a Private Collection

Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell coined the term “New York School” in 1949. He intended the term to describe the non-representational works created by his fellow artists who were working in New York City at the time and experimenting with a new style that featured abstracted forms and expressionistic paint application.

The artists represented in The New York School: Works from a Private Collection were part of a circle that interacted. The relationships between these artists and the resulting inspiration will be evident to viewers: Jasper Johns inspired Frank Stella; Helen Frankenthaler was married to Robert Motherwell and had studied with Hans Hoffman. These works continue to question the boundaries and parameters of art.

Lyman Allyn Art Museum was established in 1926 by Harriet Upson Allyn in memory of her father, Lyman Allyn, as a place for local citizens to learn about art and culture. Housed in a handsome Neo-Classical building designed by Charles A. Platt, the permanent collection includes over 10,000 paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, furniture and decorative arts, with an emphasis on American art from the 18^th through 20^th centuries. The museum is located at 625 Williams Street, New London, Connecticut, 06320. For more information, please call 860.443.2545 or visit us on the web at http://lymanallyn.org