In Past Show

Thoughts From A Stolen Land at The Dot Project

Howard Fonda fills his canvases with colorful portraits, flowers, and a spattering of other figurative subjects, as well as ebullient abstract compositions derived from nature. He achieves a sense of immediacy through loose brushstrokes, which, as Michelle Grabner wrote, “serve as an abstract field, the artist privileging intuition over illustration and conveying transcendental philosophy without strictly picturing a divinely invested natural world.” Ever philosophical and introspective, Fonda expresses a romantic worldview through text-based paintings, such as an untitled work from 2011, composed of the words “endless, timeless, limitless, nothingness,” written in sprawling violet letters across a sky-blue background. His series of untitled works from 2012, as well as his largely autobiographical paintings and drawings from 2013, embody his conviction that, “the difference between representation and abstraction is like the difference between clouds and sky.”