For almost all of November, Gross McCleaf Gallery will host the solo show Out Here on Our Own—a new series of 15 paintings by the talented Ted Walsh. His work explores and illuminates scenes from everyday life, including figure paintings and landscapes with houses and buildings that are familiar to Walsh’s family who resides in rural New Jersey. Having moved away from city life and therefore “out on their own,” his body of work has also grown to reflect this change to a simpler way.
Bloody Nose, oil on panel, 8 x 10"
“Ted Walsh has an eye for mysterious compositions that provide just enough information for a slow narrative to unfold,” notes Morgan Hobbs, assistant director of Gross McCleaf Gallery. “Walsh’s limited palette and selective, restrained detail leave space for the imagination to run wild. Applying oil paint using traditional indirect methods including glazing and scumbling, Walsh develops a highly considered finish riveling the mastery of oil painting throughout history.”
Hush, oil on panel, 17½ x 35"
Of the new series, Walsh explains that viewers will see more figures than normal and that he has condensed his subject matter down—creating quite the minimalist effect. “[The paintings] are more distilled and broader than what I’ve done in the past,” he says. “I’m building a whole world and a consistency across them. If it wasn’t important to the vibe, then I let it fall away.” The artist also incorporates buildings, homes and barns inspired by his surroundings—subject matter influenced by his background in architecture.
Walsh explains that the figures he depicts are mostly family, as seen in show piece Bloody Nose, depicting his wife in sunglasses with blood running down her face, set against a dark background. “When a thought keeps coming back,” says Walsh, “then I’ll make a painting out of it. [With Bloody Nose], it originally started with a picture of a soccer player with a bloody nose, which one day led to a discussion about my wife’s cousin who is an MMA fighter. I forgot about the bloody nose idea and then we were messing around with makeup on Halloween and my wife was wearing these sunglasses. I thought, let’s build a painting around that.”
Still There, oil on panel, 11 x 18"
Walsh works from a combination of imagination, photographs and sketches to achieve his mystical results, and will also develop a piece based on a color palette he wants to explore—all based in his technique of glazing and scumbling.
In show piece Hush, depicting a large building among an empty landscape, it’s all about the palette. “I wanted to paint the sky in a specific way,” Walsh says. “This piece has silver paint but blues and purples in the sky that I wanted to try. That informed the rest of the painting, because I wound up adding more purple in the foreground as well.”
Boy Wearing Winter Mask, oil on panel, 12 x 12"
Also important to the artist’s body of work, and apparent in the new collection, is a lack of theme or rather, letting the work stand on its own. “I don’t want [the work] to be more than just simple pictures of things that people can relate to,” says Walsh. “If something strikes me, then I hope it’s interesting to others as well. I don’t want to tell people what to take away. It’s not trying to say too much.”
All are invited to experience Walsh’s examination of the simple pleasures of everyday life starting on November 2, with the show closing November 26. —
Gross McCleaf Gallery 127 S. 16th Street • Philadelphia, PA 19102 • (215) 665-8138 • www.grossmccleaf.com
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