Claude Lawrence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Claude Lawrence: Beyond Improvisation February 26, 2015 – March 26, 2015 Gerald Peters Gallery 24 East 78th Street New York, NY Contact: Gavin Spanierman, Lena Banyan Phone: (212) 628-9760 Email: gspanierman@gpgalleryny.com lbanyan@gpgalleryny.com

I have been plenty of places in my travels but wherever I am when it comes time to paint I just start painting. – Claude Lawrence Gerald Peters Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Claude Lawrence (b. 1944). This will be Lawrence’s first exhibition in New York.

Lawrence was a professional jazz musician living primarily in Chicago and New York until the late 1980s. Although he did not receive a formal art education, he immersed himself in museums while touring the United States for his musical performances.

As a musician he played the alto saxophone. Improvisation or the “channeling of conscious or [unconscious] energy,” was important on stage. His art method followed his music practice and improvisation tempered by intention can be observed in his abstractions, painting even on tour without the benefit of a studio.

Thus both art forms informed each other. In the 1990s, he began to take his painting more seriously and developed a style that echoes the free-flowing construct of the New York downtown art scene in the 1980s, he was particularly inspired by the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Akin to the graffiti-like scrawl in Basquiat’s works, Lawrence’s disjunctive line can be both deliberately crude and in other moments quite lyrical. The repetition of elements in Lawrence’s paintings also foreshadows the quasi-figurative abstractions of painters working today such as Katherine Bernhardt. Lawrence’s paintings are the product of multiple contemporaneous and classical influences; they have a way of reminding the viewer of the past, but also bring one in dialogue with the present. He painted in the Hamptons until 2004 after which he relocated back to Chicago where he now lives and works.

This selection of Lawrence’s thickly painted canvases and works on paper are but a small percentage of a larger body of work developed over the course of a long career. The works are primarily abstract, although the titles render meanings about music, festivals as well as allusions to the human form. Ever so often faces emerge from the canvas. These are not intended as identifiable friends or family, but are artistic executions which derive from paint on the substrate.

Top right: Seawood Surplus Sale, 2001, oil on canvas, 58 x 54 inches. © 2015 Courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery

C L A U D E L AW R E N C E B E Y O N D

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Carnival, 1988 acrylic on paper, 22 3/4 x 30 inches

Former Circle acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Grannie, 2013 acrylic on canvas, 36 x 12 inches

Lyrical Island, 1/2002 acrylic on paper, 22 1/2 x 30 inches

Mr. Billie, 2012 acrylic on canvas, 36 x 9 inches

My Old Flame acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Poor Larry acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Red Army acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Scrapyard Carousel, 2013 acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches

Seaworld Surplus Sale acrylic on canvas, 54 x 54 inches

Spring, 1993 acrylic on paper, 23 x 29 inches

The Long March, 2005 acrylic on paper, 18 x 24 inches

Detriot, 2001 acrylic on paper, 35 1/2 x 59 inches

Miss Rita, 1991 acrylic on canvas, 29 x 25 inches

Sunday Market, 1996 acrylic on canvas, 26 x 34 inches

Danceathon, 3/2001 acrylic on paper, 13 1/4 x 19 inches

Wednesday in Space, 4/2001 acrylic on paper, 13 1/4 x 19 inches

Invasion, 9/1998 acrylic on paper, 13 1/4 x 19 inches

Decimation acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Hoverists acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Family acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Orchestra, 2005 acrylic on paper, 21 3/4 x 28 inches

Virgin Passage, 2002 acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 inches

Starstruck, 4/2001 acrylic on canvas, 24 x 12 inches

Rite of Passage mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches

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