The contemporary artist leads a guided meditation on his dynamic, minimal paintings.
Shutting out the street sounds of Chinatown is the first step artist Landon Metz takes when creating an oasis of calm in his New York City art studio. Other than a couple of unruly houseplants and statement furniture pieces, there is not much else that occupies the artist’s minimalist sanctuary. With the city sounds now vanquished, Metz can focus on creating subtle yet powerful biomorphic paintings that evoke a sense of rhythm and flow.
In this episode of Private View, Metz describes his mindful approach to producing his large-scale paintings from his new studio in Manhattan. Working with thin washes of dye in a single color, the painter creates abstract motifs soaked into unprimed canvas. The aesthetic elements of his practice draw inspiration from color field painting, a style of abstract painting that rose to prominence during the 1950s and ‘60s in New York and is associated with artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and Morris Louis.
Color field painting was a form of abstract expressionism that typically described canvases covered by amorphous blocks of contextless color. The work that Metz creates is an emotive evolution of the twentieth-century art movement. Between negative and positive space lies the story of the painter’s upbringing in the Arizona desert, a place of vast, placid emptiness that has been a source of constant inspiration to him.
Many have used Metz’s formative years in the southwestern state as a way to decipher his sculptures and installations, however, he intentionally leaves his work untitled. This encourages the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the nature of his meditative abstractions.
His work calls on the viewer to not only consider the paintings in front of them but also summon the tranquility in which they were created.
