Decisive Eye 138" x 103" Acrylic with glass microspheres on canvas
SOLSTICE— Peter
Frank, Art Critic
"Dean Andrews’ Solstice series
displays an admixture of gesture and structure, expansiveness and restraint.
Each keyed to a single
color, they shimmer with
other colors hidden amidst the brushstrokes, colors that range from complementary
to slightly dissonant but that in the aggregate give each painting depth, complexity,
and atmosphere.
Andrews’ chromatic scale deliberately avoids the extremes of luminosity
and matte dullness; rather, the coloristic presence here is rich, balanced, and
alluring without being either showy or self-effacing.
These paintings breathe – but they breathe in a regular, even rhythmic
manner, undergirded as they are by a hidden armature, one that we almost feel
rather than see. If in some paintings this armature emerges as a line echoing
the predominant lay of the painting – vertical echoing vertical, horizontal
re-stratifying horizontal – against a welter of countervailing strokes,
in others it can be sensed in the strokes themselves, plied one against another
in a free but even fashion.
Even in the square paintings of this series, where the gestures seem to tumble
in random fashion, the apparently directionless motion starts to churn powerfully,
agitating itself into a contained storm.
