ArtistJohn Winslow
Blue Dream III
Date2013
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOther: 72 × 72 cm (28 3/8 × 28 3/8 in.)
Framed Size: 73 1/2 × 73 1/2 in. (186.7 × 186.7 cm)
Credit LineDC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Collection
Object numberDCCAH2013.005
ClassificationsPaintings
Locations
- Office of Risk Management (441 4th Street NW, 510S)
DescriptionOne of many paintings in which Winslow tries to create a scene that invites the viewer not only into the painter's studio with his tools and accoutrements but also into his imaginings. The weightless alternate reality that hovers about him here consists of solid and half formed figures and abstract forms that seem to be jostling to be in the painting he is thinking about. This blue dream series marks, he thinks, his first satisfying attempt to put together the range from abstraction to realism that he wants in one painting in a believable context. Winslow’s first influence, as an undergraduate majoring in architecture, taught him to think about locating the human form in a specific space and the impulse to do that has carried through in his endeavors as a painter. In the whole canon of western art the painters who also followed that dictum best, Vermeer, Velasquez and Sargent among them, remain favorites. Winslow’s second most important influence was the teaching of Josef Albers. Albers taught Winslow about the primacy of color and how to think abstractly. Finding ways to follow both these directions simultaneously keeps him going.
