A native of Florida, Stan Gregory is heir to the modernist conventions of geometric abstraction, but his work also resonates with lines reminiscent of the Renaissance, Islamic and Japanese calligraphic traditions. The dynamic, energized lines he creates straddle the language of Pollock, graffiti, and Eastern art in one sweeping statement. Gregory sets his framework of curvilinear bands of varying thickness against vivid, minimal backgrounds. He constructs his canvases in a painstaking manner, layer by layer, in a process that creates fresco-like surfaces. Gregory's paintings allude to the early machine paintings of Francis Picabia and the graphic style and cartoon-like forms of Saul Steinberg. They are graphic, frontal and flat; their patterning conjures varied imagery whose sources cannot be pinpointed. Though committed to the intuitive process of inventing his images, on close scrutiny Gregory's paintings reveal the rules by which he orders his work. As Saul Ostrow has written, "In foregoing the exploitation of chance and process that are frequently associated with expressionism, Gregory's work is able to articulate a notion of order that is equated with introspection and forethought." He starts with ready-made images – reproductions of photographs found in either magazines or newspaper – to begin his paintings, and then he obliterates their imagery. In an apparently deliberate manner, Gregory transforms them into linear webs and abstract structures that describe what he calls "a topography of relationships, which map the interaction of form." As Florida art critic Mary Campbell once wrote, "In a Gregory painting, the most casual patch of mauve paint could be the key to the entire composition." By regulating the interaction between the varying elements and the processes he employs, Gregory's paintings correspond to form on a universal level. They become subconsciously symbolic of secular mandalas – symbols of the universe. Gregory says that, "There is a basic relationship between everything, and it is this essential relationship that gives meaning to life. My work investigates this relational continuum through a personal vocabulary of visual form." It is Gregory's authorial decisions that undermine the works' implicit decorative qualities.
Collection Highlights
Gregory's works are included in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His work is also included in prominent public collections such as that of Chase Manhattan Bank, CIGNA Foundation, Philadelphia and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.