Lumberville Streaks I

Description

Jon Carsman's paintings of suburban hometown views seem at once comfortable in their familiarity, yet disquieting in their eerie mood. The artist takes a charming scene and subverts its easy appeal by exaggerating both hue and contrasts of light and dark. Eliminating tonal gradations, Carsman flattens forms. What results are pictures, that for all their reference to the real world, are virtual abstractions. While the painter's use of American architectural subject matter relates him to Edward Hopper, Carsman eschews the human presence. His writhing plant forms, reminiscent of the animated vegetation of Charles Burchfield, provide the only hint of life. Carsman's is a formal realism, in which the concern for structure and pattern is paramount.