My solo show at Brooklyn Box- Opening June 7

announcing... One Hundred Years of Poppies, 1914 to 2014 Paintings by Robert Gould  Detail of “100 Poppies Painted 6 times” Oil on Panel 24" x 32" Robert Gould is presenting paintings coinciding with the one hundredth anniversary of the start of World War One. The paintings represent a reimagining of the passing of 100 years depicted in plant forms which mark out yearly cycles of growth and death. One Hundred Years of Poppies, 1914–2014  will be on view from Saturday, June 7th – Sunday, June 29th Opening reception: Saturday, June 7th from 6–9pm We hope to see you there!   bkbx [Brooklyn Box] is an exhibition space located in the former National Packing Box Factory on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY. bkbx was founded by eleven artists and is a project-in-residence at Proteus Gowanus. A portion of all bkbx sales go to support Proteus Gowanus. bkbx 543 Union Street Brooklyn, NY 11215 Visit our website: bkbxgallery.com And "like" us on Facebook Copyright © 2014 bkbx (Brooklyn Box), All rights reserved.

I have work in a group show in Jersey City

We hope you'll join us for the opening of
Terra Incognita at Curious Matter–
this collection is positively amazing!
Sunday, May 18, 3 to 6pm, please come!

DRIVING FROM MANHATTAN: Take the Holland Tunnel. Exit the tunnel and turn left onto Jersey Avenue. (Jersey Ave. is just past Rademan Place, SUNOCO is on the right. If you are on I-78 W and reach NJ-139 you’ve gone a little too far.) Follow Jersey Avenue straight ahead then turn right onto 10th Street. Take the first left onto Coles Street. Turn left onto Fifth Street. 272 Fifth is on the left. It’s just a few minutes drive once you’re out of the tunnel.

PATH FROM NYC: Take the Newark/Journal Square bound PATH train from 33rd, 23rd, 14th or 9th Streets (all at 6th Ave.) or from Christopher Street or WTC. Get off at GROVE STREET station. Exit and walk West on Newark Ave. When you reach Jersey Ave. make a right and continue to 5th Street. The gallery is to the left at 272 Fifth Street. TWO TRAVEL NOTES: 1) The PATH train stops in Hoboken before continuing to Jersey City on weekends. 2) The WTC line is currently out of service on weekends.

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CURIOUS MATTER is an exhibition venue for contemporary visual art located in downtown Jersey City, NJ. Curious Matter exhibitions and publications evidence the pursuit to understand and articulate our individual and collective experience of the world, real or imagined. We examine fantastic notions, confounding ideas and audacious thoughts. Curious Matter strives to foster dialogue among artists at all career stages with a calendar of regular exhibitions. Our commitment extends to our audience as we endeavor to open a door to appreciating contemporary art in an atmosphere that encourages engagement and curiosity. Curious Matter is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

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100 Poppies- Centennial of World War 1 Painting

In honor of the centennial of the start of World War 1, I am building a new painting, entitled "100 Poppies". I am using a simple pictorial sequence of 100 poppies images, representing the span of time in years that separates us, in the present, from the time of World War 1. Poppies are laid out in a linear time line format that starts in 1914 and leads to the present day. The chart starts in the lower left and moves to the right for twenty spaces, or years. It then starts again on the left side one row up. Thus it moves upwards for five rows. Each row can be conceived of as one generation.
 The painting is in two parts for ease of handling. The finished painting will be sixteen feet long and four feet high. I am building it for my solo show opening next month at Brooklyn Box.  It will take up an entire length of one wall of the gallery.  Again it is constructed using paper shopping bags, battlefield earth, and pigments.

 

The left hand section. Depicting the cauterized war years.

The unfinished right hand section of the painting.

Close up of encrusted poppie.

Cauterized charcoal poppie.

Mud encrusted Poppies wet with walnut stain. This home made walnut stain was created from nuts that were collected from the Harper's Ferry battle field during my visit last summer.

Mud spattered poppie.

Battlefield earth ,pigments and glue

Bag of poppies ready for application and finish painting.

Flying Squirrel poppies

New work on the easel

I'm posting some paintings that I am preparing for my one person show in June. It will be at Brooklyn Box gallery 543 Union Street, Brooklyn. More on that later.
With this work I am exploring ideas of time, nature, and human conflict. The time frame for the work is the one hundred year anniversary of the start of World War 1.  This work was partly inspired from reading Max Hastings book "Catastrophe 1914 Europe goes to war". In it I found some passing references to plants that solders found themselves fighting amongst at the begining of the war. The simple farm fields of Europe, that those farmers would never get to harvest. I have been thinking about how nature reclaims battlefields after visiting many sites of the American Civil War. Today most century old battlefields resemble pristine park lands. Set aside for our remembrance of those who fought there. In these places it seems that time has returned to a natural rhythm, a rhythm of the seasons, the "growing season". This beutiful natural world is the one that confronts us today as we try to imagine what it must have been like 100 years before.I thought about how to depict the yearly life cycle of common plants that might have significance with the gigantic battles of WW1 and the passage of 100 years.

I came up with simply painting out lines of the various plant forms one on top of the other, one hundred times. Laying one drawing on top of another. Mimicking the yearly growing cycle, year by year, decade by decade. Until I reached the one century mark.

Sugar beat painted one hundred times

Poppies painted one hundred times on grey

Poppies painted one hundred times on dark grey

Map of Europe with balanced stacks of chairs. I am planning to rework this painting a lot. I don't think that I need the map element any more. I am going to link the stacks of chairs together with string.