Paul Resika

Paul Resika was a student of Abstract Expressionism under Hans Hofmann, whose other pupils included Wolf Kahn and Joan Mitchell. Resika’s eventual style would fall in the category of representational abstraction, characterized variously by loose brushwork and rigid geometry; he considers himself a colorist, influenced by Henri Matisse and the Fauves. Resika’s practice is especially notable for its iterative process: he paints a single subject in variation and only moves on when he has exhausted it. Examples of this include his “Dark Lady” series, featuring a lone nude in various landscapes, and “Flowers”, a suite of still lifes. His favored subjects are nautical—born of the belief that “piers and boats and lighthouses are forms you can do something with”—and these images make frequent appearances in his work, serving as the core of his series “Vessels”.