Current
Exhibitions:
GEORGE SORRELS
Personal Landscapes
September 24-October 23
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George Sorrels was born in Ennis, Texas, in 1944. After growing up in
Dallas, he earned a B.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin (1968)
and an M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan (197l).
Sorrels’ first national recognition as an artist came as a student at
Cranbrook when he won a purchase prize in the Young Printmakers
1970 exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He spent the
summer of 1979 in Italy as an artist-in-residence for the University of
Georgia.
Sorrels is Professor of Art at Kutztown University, Kutztown,
Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1973. He has had nine solo shows
in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York; his latest was at the
University of Texas at Austin as a distinguished alumnus. At the same
time his work has won several purchase prizes and awards and he has been
included in over a hundred group exhibitions across the country and
abroad.
In his painting Sorrels has developed a color concept which he calls
Color as Space. Based on years of direct painting from landscape, the
method employs the use of complementary color to produce atmospheric
perspective. Whereas linear perspective depends on an artificial theory
with vanishing points on the horizon, Sorrels’ Color as Space uses color
with complementary mixes and changes in temperature to produce a more
believable illusion in pictorial space. Challenging long held
conventions, he declares, "Red is the most important color in my
landscape painting." Specifically, in painting each plane of space, he
adds progressively cooler reds (cadmium red in the foreground, Indian
red in the midground, and alizarin crimson in the background) to the
receding greens of a summer landscape. The warmer greens pull away from
the cooler greens and extend toward the viewer. With this method, the
color becomes the space in a painting.
George Sorrels, whose personal vision of the world around him is
expressed in a painstakingly crafted style, takes many months to
complete even a single painting or silverpoint drawing. His art is based
on representation of the natural world, but is poetical in its magical
light and monumentality, despite an almost miniature scale. Sorrels’
art, although highly original, is profoundly influenced by the
aesthetics of fifteenth century illuminated manuscripts as well as
twentieth century American abstract painting. This amalgam has inspired
work of visual poetry that captivates and engages the viewer in
unexpected ways.
An illustrated brochure is available upon request.
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