Peter Wayne Lewis: The Beautiful Brain

Press Release

February 26th – April 4th, 2015n n nSkoto Gallery is pleased to present The Beautiful Brain, an exhibition of recent paintings by the Jamaica-American artist Peter Wayne Lewis. This will be his second solo exhibition at the gallery. The artist will be at the reception on Thursday, February 26th, 6-8pm.n nPeter Wayne Lewis’s recent work continues his profound interest in the exploration of strategies that seek to expand the context surrounding the nature of painting as well as the tradition of American abstract art. He combines complex compositional organization with spatial dynamic that broke away from flatness as well as a strong conviction in the spiritual energy of color to create pictures that continue to refine and re-define the language of abstraction. There is a physical as well as an emotional presence in his work that brings together a hierarchy of forms drawn from a range of sources including nature, physics, the String Theory and the improvisational qualities of jazz with a concern for mark making evocative of the breadth of human experience. His work is highly intuitive and conscientiously analytical, drawing on spontaneous association, memories, personal and political association that acknowledge a willingness to reduce forms and ideas to their essence while simultaneously preserving an overall fluency, energy and beauty.n nInherent throughout the pictures in this exhibition are unstable structures of process and transition; doubt and ambivalence informed by a depth of resonance. There is a complete freedom from fixed form and shapes as he strives to enact a visual language of the spontaneous Self, immersed in a spectacular fusion of matter, science and art through transformation. As stated by the artist: – I don’t want my paintings to be passive objects. I want them to generate excitement, questioning, even intrigue. Some perceived imbalance or discord allows movement and rhythm. I am very conscious of the formal attributes. I teach those composition elements of formal attributes, harmony and unity. Personally, I am trying to shake that upon my work. I am trying to find other ways of creating harmony, ways that generate some uneasiness.n nPeter Wayne Lewis was born in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, and moved to the United States in 1962 where his parents made their home in in Sacramento, California. He received his MFA in painting in 1979 from San Jose State University of California and became a U.S. citizen in 1983. He is Professor of Painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA and former Chairman of Fine Art 2D. He has exhibited extensively in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, USA, and Asia CA. Upcoming exhibition include a survey exhibition of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art – MOCA – North Miami, FL, September, 2015. He is in numerous public and private collections at home and abroad. He currently resides in South Orange, NJ, Boston, MA and Beijing, China.