randee silv ransilv@hotmail.com 212 252 -6972
link to: recent worklink to: canvaslink to: paperlink to: bio & studio

 
 

...a true abstract painter's sensibility in cutting the forms and colors loose and then following to see where it will take her.

..The crucial thing is the balance between the yin that freedom of expression offers and the yang found in the discipline. The proportions of each aspect vary in Silv's work but neither is ever completely absent.

...The exploration, the journey, the flight of fancy, the intelligence, the informed visual sensibility - all of this makes this work magnificent. But the thing that makes these pieces wonderful and is the key to their meaning is their uninhibited celebration of gesture. read full review:

 


Axial Gallery, Lascaux

  

If both San shamans of South Africa and Upper Paleolithic cave painters first felt and saw fields of dots, zigzags, arcs, spirals, rectangular forms, nested curves and meandering lines that slanted, flickered, pulsated and blended one with another during the first stage of trance as they entered into the spirit world to later return and engrave or paint their visions, could this mean that art didn't begin with figures and representation, but with the abstract?
.

Working with oilsticks has given my surface the tactile diversity, and my strokes the continuous flow, that I need as I paint within those moments before gestures transform themselves into recognizable images, in that space between what's familiar and what’s not yet been encountered, where there's not an apparent boundary, only sensations of infinite possibility.

With each journey I've made to Morocco, I've found myself immersed in the organic vitality and abundant earthen textures of its walls, in the imbedded storytelling of successive paintings, re-paintings and graffiti. I then recognized that my own canvases were also absorbing an accumulation of impulses, changes, marks, shapes, scrapings, wear and tear.

Through my friendship with M'allim Najib Soudani in Essaouiria, Morocco, I’ve been able to observe for myself the intensity and power of trance while, playing the gut stringed guimbri, he directs the dancer's passage with the transiting spirits during the Gnawa night ritual, the Lila. The Gnawa, who came from many different places south of the Sahara, practice this syncretistic evening ceremony that fuses Islamic, Berber and Sufi elements with the Black African animism of their ancestors.

  
 

randee silv with m'allim najib soudani,

randee silv with m'allim najib soudani, brothers and crew near essaouira, morocco.


My curiosity only ventured deeper as I began connecting this quality of concentration, and its kinetic looseness, with how I respond within my own work. Listening to particular recordings of John Coltrane and of Miles Davis, I noticed how the grooves seemed to propel me into a space where the force and shape of the music meshed with my own strokes in a way very similar to the interchange between dancers and m'allim.

I've become intrigued with how Paleolithic image makers transformed inner entoptic visions into a concrete visual presence. Something was unlocked, identified. Something was acknowledged. Something was shared. I recognize in my own gestures a continuing affinity with the way these indeterminate abstract marks were first painted on cave walls.

SELECTED GROUP & SOLO EXHIBITIONS

 

reload: m55 art in L.I.C., m55 art, Long Island City, N.Y. 2008
Gallery Artists, m55 art, Long Island City, N.Y. 2008
Paper, Paint, Clay, Rhonda Schaller Studio, New York, NY, 2008
The Painting Center, Art File, New York, NY, 2008
 Fragments of a Larger Idea, Rhonda Schaller Studio, New York, NY, 2007
Crossroads, Rhonda Schaller Studio, New York, NY, 2007
Gallery Artists, Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, Jackson, Wyoming, 2007
Abstract: Alive!, Gallery 380, Brooklyn, NY,2007
Nondesript, 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, California, 2007
The Painting Center, Art File, New York, NY, 2007
Gallery Artists, Jackson Street Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming, 2006
46th Chromosome, Jackson Street Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming, 2006
Peace, Sideshow Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2004
The Painting Center, Art File, New York, NY, 2004
257 Varet Open Studios, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2004
The Painting Center: Art File, New York, NY, 2003
257 Varet Open Studios, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2003
JumpArtists, JumpArts@Context Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2002
257 Varet Open Studios, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2002
5th Stop Open Studios, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2002
Essaouira, Freiria, NYC, solo show, Jump Arts@Brecht Forum, New York, 2001
Time. Motion. Change , solo show, Galeria Moçambique Kultural, Lisbon, Portugal, 1999
Bird Told Me So, solo show, Galeria Costa do Castelo, Lisbon, Portugal, 1999
New Work, Open Studio, Freiria, Portugal, 1998
New Work, Open Studio, Freiria, Portugal, 1997
New Work, Open Studio, Fonte da Telha, Portugal, 1995
New Work, Open Studio, Fonte da Telha, Portugal, 1994
Face/Body, solo show, Kim Gallery, New York, NY, 1984
Caidoz Gallery, New York, NY, 1983
301 Houston Gallery, New York, NY, 1983
DFC Gallery,solo show, New York, NY, 1979
DFC Gallery, solos show, New York, NY, 1978
Works Gallery East, Southampton, New York, 1977


GRANTS

Endowment for the Arts/Art in Public Places Grant
Right Bank View, 101/2' X 181/2', Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, South Carolina, 1980

PUBLICATIONS

Art & Life in a Changing New York, Resolve40, 2007
 Crossroads, Rhonda Schaller Studio, June 2007
muhheankuntuk / CD cover, Clean Feed, Lisbon, Portugal, 2007
242 Varet, Erie Art Museum, concert publication, Erie, Pennsylvania, 2006
Lists of Wishes / CD cover, High Road Records, Austin, Texas, 2006
Celebrating Gesture, Abstract Art Online, Artist Profile, Volume VI/Number 7, March 2004
rapt circle / CD Cover, Cadence Jazz Records, 2004
Sudanii / CD cover, deep dish records, Essaouira, Morocco, 1999
which way what / CD cover, deep dish records, Lisbon, Portugal, 1995
Disappeared, poems, Costa da Caparica, Portugal, 1994
Very Burnt Beans, poems, Firesign Press, New York, NY, 1988
Hair of Reason, poems, Firesign Press, New York, NY, 1987
Stroker Magazine, drawings, New York, NY, May Issue, 1983
Right Bank View, Greenville Jetport News, Vol.6 #2. Greenville, South Carolina 1981
On the Wall, The Greenville News, Greenville, South Carolina, October 1980


EDUCATION

Alfred University, studio art, Alfred, NY, 1971-1973
Fashion Institute of Techology, silkscreening / textile design, NYC, 1973
C. W. Post College, fine arts, Brookville, NY, 1974
Trenton State College, B.A. Art Therapy, Trenton, NJ, 1974-1975

Alfred University, clay summer intensive, Alfred, NY, 1972
Instituto Allende, clay & textiles, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, 1973
University of California, clay & wood firing, Yuba City, California, 1974
Hal Riegger, raku, Grass Valley, California, 1974
Penland School of Art, glassblowing, Penland, North Carolina, 1976
Film/Video Arts, filmmaking, NYC, 1985 & 1987

 

ransilv@hotmail.com (212) 252-6972

 
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walls. essaouira, morocco