Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of new paintings by Stanley Bielen. This is his fifth exhibition with the gallery and features his intimate still life paintings. An artist reception will be held June 26th from 6-8pm.
Bielen’s process begins outside of the studio with planting the flowers he will later paint. He brings the clippings he cultivates to his studio and renders them in voluminous, rich brushwork. The blooms are typically painted at scale in one session, immortalizing them in that moment. Reveling in the paint itself, Bielen depicts the objects with a sense of immediacy, as if glimpsed and remembered in an instant.
Flowers, fruits, and vessels are modeled with gestural, loaded brushstrokes. The forms take on a dimensional, tactile quality as Bielen sculpts shadow, builds up dense backgrounds, or lays down generous daubs of paint to portray petals. Irregular, impasto shapes define structure, light, and shadow, making the work at once abstract and recognizable. Lush colors emerge vividly against stark black or white grounds.
In subject and medium the paintings are traditional, echoing still-life conventions, but Bielen’s lavish paint handling and pared-down settings feel decidedly contemporary. His work draws on the dramatic chiaroscuro of the Baroque, channeling its theatrical lighting and deep tonal contrasts to intensify the physicality of each painting.
Stanley Bielen was born in the Podkarpackie region of Poland. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and is influenced by the long regional realist tradition called the Philadelphia School. He exhibits nationally and is represented in public and private collections including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Stanley lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Bridgton, Maine.
