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 and 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.
Read MoreGregory starts with ready-made images—reproductions of photographs found in either magazines or newspapers—when he begins a painting, and then he obliterates the imagery. In a deliberate manner, Gregory transforms the images into linear webs and abstract structures that describe what he calls "a topography of relationships, which map the interaction of form." 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'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, including those of Chase Manhattan Bank; CIGNA Foundation, Philadelphia; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
