VONN SUMNER’s “New Ancient Pictures” reviewed in the Washington Post

By Mark Jenkins November 13 at 12:40 PM

 

Vonn Sumner

Would it be misleading to call Vonn Sumner’s art “Homeric?” The California artist’s “New Ancient Pictures” features paintings of men he calls “warriors” rendered in a blue-free palette partly inspired by the lack of that color in the language of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” But the Morton Fine Art show doesn’t literally portray classical-world combatants. The four warrior pictures are self-portraits of a sort, and feature a man who carries a garbage can and lid as armor and shield, and a broom as his sword. Other paintings have even less connection to heroic legends of the bygone Mediterranean.

Sumner is a representational artist who explores traditional media. These pieces are mostly oils on panels, and a previous Morton show included his temperas. But the artist demonstrates his modernity by working from photos — often of himself — and using large blocks of pure color. He flattens perspective, which suits such paintings as “Pink Theatre,” a depiction of a shallowly articulated building facade. Among the surrealist elements are elaborate masks and, in “Hovering,” a figure who’s prone in midair. The least interesting picture in the series is “Palette 1,” an abstraction that really isn’t one: It’s actually a daubed record of all the reds, grays and blacks that Sumner used to paint this un-blued demimonde.

New Ancient Pictures: Vonn Sumner On view through Nov. 21 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW. 202-628-2787.www.mortonfineart.com.

Pink Theatre, 24″x24″, oil on panel

 

Vonn Sumner, Hovering, 24″x24″, oil on panel

 

VONN SUMNER, Palette 1, 2015, 33″x28″, oil on jutte

VONN SUMNER’s artwork featured in Huffington Post by John Seed

Hot Off the Easel is a monthly blog feature designed to showcase a cross-section of vital and varied contemporary paintings. – John Seed

Vonn Sumner, Lid-Head, 2015, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

“I wanted this painting to contain as much silence and atmosphere as possible, while retaining a sense of humor and painterly pleasure.” – Vonn Sumner

Read More at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/hot-off-the-easel-novembe_b_8380826.html

Click HERE to view available artwork by VONN SUMNER

VONN SUMNER’s solo “New Ancient Pictures” at Morton Fine Art

Neo Byzantine Square, 24″x24″, oil on canvas

New Ancient Pictures

A solo exhibition of oil paintings by VONN SUMNER

Friday, November 6th – November 24th, 2015

OPENING RECEPTION 

Friday, November 6th 6pm-8pm

ARTIST TALK

Saturday, November 21st 3pm-4pm

Pink Theatre, 24″x24″, oil on panel

EXHIBITION LOCATION

Morton Fine Art (MFA)

1781 Florida Ave NW (at 18th & U Sts)

Washington, DC 20009

(202) 628-2787

http://www.mortonfineart.com

mortonfineart@gmail.com

HOURS

Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

Sunday 12pm-5pm

Warrior Moving, 2015, 12″x12″, oil on panel

About New Ancient Pictures

In the Spring of 2011, at the Phillips Collection here in Washington, I saw an exhibition of Philip Guston’s paintings made while he was traveling in Rome in 1971. Around the same time I came across the idea that in the original Homeric tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey there is no mention of the color “blue”-that even though those stories take place under skies and over oceans, the color palette of those stories is mostly: red, yellow, black, grey and white. That idea, whether true or not, was exciting to me and related directly to the palette that Guston was using in the Roma pictures. All of this coincided with a time in my life when I have moved several times between states, and across coasts, so that somehow the mythic tales of Homer and the aesthetic travels of Guston felt personally related to my own search for a sense of ‘home’, for personal transformation, and for a feeling of artistic renewal. The paintings in this show are a result of those artistic influences, mixed with my own subjective experience of our shared, observable world.

-VONN SUMNER

Mirror, 26.25″x20.75″, oil on canvas Vonn Sumner in his studio, Courtesy of the Artist About VONN SUMNER   “Vonn Sumner’s fine paintings are equivocal visual wonders. They are painted worlds that reflect a bright clarity interrupted by mysterious bewilderments. Ideas and concepts are overwhelmed by empathic feelings suspending us in a tension between answers and questions provoking and teasing us into a long and careful looking…perhaps, the look of a lifetime?” ~Wayne Thiebaud, 2015   VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the son of a picture framer in an artistic family. Frequent trips to museums as well as travel in Europe, Central America and India, shaped Sumner’s visual aesthetic during his formative years. He attended the University of California at Davis, where he earned both a Bachelor’s degree and an M.F.A. in painting. While at UC Davis he worked closely with Wayne Thiebaud  both as a student and as a teaching assistant. He also took summer classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and is influenced by the Bay Area Figurative movement that centered around that school in the postwar period. Sumner has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1997. He has been featured or reviewed in many publications including NewAmerican Paintings, Elle Décor, The Washington Post, L.A. Weekly, Art Ltd., Riviera magazine, Hi Fructose, Juxtapoz, Cartwheel, and featured on the cover of Boom magazine and Quick Fiction. Sumner has had two solo museum exhibitions – Vonn Sumner: The Other Side of Here– at the Riverside Art Museum in 2008 and Vonn Sumner: Stages,  in 2011 at the Phillips Museum of Art in Pennsylvania . CLICK HERE TO VIEW AVAILABLE WORKS BY VONN SUMNER.