Open Work: Recent watercolors

Greg Kucera Gallery is pleased to announce our eighth one-person exhibition by Northwest painter Jeffrey Simmons. The artist explores light, pattern, and symmetry through a meticulous and precise application of watercolor on paper.
Delicate rings of concentric circles serve as the subject. Soft-edged rings of color are arranged in elaborate compositions referencing illustrations from geometry textbooks and astronomical catalogs, tantric paintings, Islamic prayer rugs, and Chinese ancestor paintings.

The show’s title, Open Work, refers both to the open interpretive nature of abstract painting and to the holes (openings) Simmons cuts into the paper of several paintings. In the Resonator paintings (example above left) the holes are hard geometric voids in contrast with the soft edges of the painted rings. In the Light Trap paintings (example above right), the network of holes appears to contain soft, hazy color. This color is in fact painted on the reverse of the paper. The viewer sees only the glow of this color reflected off the rag board behind the paper.

Biography
Jeffrey Simmons received his BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. He has been exhibiting in the Northwest since 1995. Simmons was awarded the Betty Bowen Committee Special Recognition Award by the Seattle Art Museum in 1996. His work is in the permanent collections of the Tacoma Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, the University of Washington, the Microsoft Corporation, among others.