Samuel Neustadt | Across the Road
Clifford B. West Gallery
July 26-August 24 | Opening reception: Friday, July 26, 5-7 PM
Exhibiting artist Samuel Neustadt will generously donate his proceeds to Dartmouth Health Children’s Oncology.
Please join the artist for a special event with DH Children’s guests on Friday, August 16 from 5-7 PM, click here for more information
This new body of work in the exhibition, Across the Road, is a culmination of the past several years of studying, sketching, and finally digitally painting the views across the road from Neustadt’s studio windows. Studies in varied seasons and light– dawn, daylight, evening, and moonlight– each painting is an amalgamation of these variables. His unique process combines imagination and a stylus– a digital media tool. The drawings are highly layered and composed using more than one light source, an important aspect of the work that he feels introduces kinetic energy. The pallet is sometimes indicative of the true colors and sometimes as he perceives them. Color is used to help accentuate the forms and the negative space around them, sometimes using complimentary colors to create a vibration between the different forms and the surrounding space.
The Paintings:
As an architect and artist, Samuel Neustadt has traveled over the past fifty years exploring many countries and cultures. Throughout his travels with pen or pencil in hand, he’s enjoyed capturing landscapes and classical architecture around the world. A few years ago, after seeing a series of lectures by artist David Hockney, he was introduced to electronic painting. Although he had many years of digital delineation in architecture, he was intrigued by the idea of drawing and painting in this new medium. His process begins with a photographic study of a particular subject. From these images, a line drawing is developed using a stylus on iPadPro. After the initial sketch, color is introduced and developed to create the forms, highlights, and shadows in the composition. The digital medium allows him to adjust tones and composition and finally merge the multiple layers of the work to create a finished painting.
The Sculptures:
The sculptures are not what would typically be considered organic, however, Neustadt sees them as organic shapes and compares them to nature, when one limb’s growth leads to the next creating the complete form of a tree. The materials selected are of both soft and hardwood with the grains primarily flowing in one direction, giving the feel of a piece from a single block, although they are of many elements. The finishes are varied and applied to reveal the grain beneath. His sculptural choices weave through space, yet their inherent design architecture grounds them as objects. The designs are sometimes continuous and complex, sometimes simple with abrupt endings, and other times there are multiple forms juxtaposed. As in the paintings, the composition of the positive forms and the negative space around them are of equal importance.
Samuel Neustadt | Biography
Samuel Neustadt’s work is in collections in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has exhibited in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Italy, with solo exhibitions at the Artistree Gallery in Vermont in 2019, and currently at AVA Gallery in New Hampshire, as well as various group shows in Vermont and New Hampshire. His architectural work and paintings have been published in local periodicals in Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as, “The New York Times”, “The Wall Street Journal”, “Casa Vogue”, “House and Gardens”, and “British House and Gardens”, they are also included in various books by author Mary Gilliatt.
