Existing comment:
CHARLES BURCHFIELD
The evolution of Gates' particular nature-infused abstraction was on display in his two-person exhibition at the Phillips Gallery with Charles Burchfield in 1947. Both artists were masters of the watercolor medium,
and their preferred subject
matter was the landscape. They both appeared to abstract from the landscape for expressive purposes, though Burchfield's landscapes tended towards fantasy, while those of Gates had a more convincing physicality.
Ben L. Summerford, Gates' former student and then teaching colleague at American
University, offered his understanding of this physical quality present in Gates' art, speculating about the inspiration for Winter Sun, a 1949 egg tempera painting:
The painting is constructional and architectonic, perhaps reflecting Gates's interest in geology, which was the other consuming interest in his life. In a 1960 interview (with Jean White in The Washington Post), he revealed, "I almost became a geologist instead of a painter... I still can't get through a new road cut without examining the minerals and fossils."
As his student, I knew about Gates' interest in geology. A visit to his Alexandria, Virginia, studio in 1978 made the extent of his obsession clear. Fully a third of his large, light-filled studio was devoted to a collection of micromounts, tiny mounted mineral specimens that required magnification to be appreciated. His vast collection was carefully organized in rows of gleaming metal cabinets. Alongside the cabinets were tables with different apparatus set up for magnifying and illuminating the specimens.
Their crystalline structures and vibrant colors provide a clue to understanding the Gates's way of seeing and his approach to representation, even in his most abstract compositions. In a sense, the magnified crystals functioned as an organizing principle, or the "bones" for his landscape, cityscape, and figural compositions. Instead of painterly abstractions of nature, he was creating images undergirded by physical structures found in nature. This inner structure made his works utterly convincing in a naturalist sense, even as their subjects were bent, folded, and rearranged in dynamic ways.
Image: Charles Burchfield, Still-Life in Winter, 1951. Watercolor and pencil on paper mounted on paperboard. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1978.56. |