Oil Paintings By E. Gibbons: The Complete Box Series, Deluxe Edition

If you enjoy classical figurative art you will like this. It's interesting to see how many variations can be made on the theme of a figure in a box. It is also inspiring to see how someone can create such a body of work off of what seems like a simple idea.

E. Gibbons comes to this series of 'Box Paintings' with a long history of study, influences from working in Asian art, finding success in drawing as well as painting, and an 'epiphany moment' while standing before the paintings of David and Ingres in the Louvre in Paris. The result of all of these influences is documented in this very beautifully designed and important book that houses 'the Entire Box Series...as of 2008'. It is a worthy addition to the libraries of collectors who appreciate the return of fine painting in an age when the emotional explosion or 'look at me' pictures fill the current museum and gallery exhibitions.Gibbons has settled on the box series for a number of reasons: the 30" X 30" paintings allow visual conversation with the model and the plethora of ideas the pose and expression of the painting pose; the paintings can be comfortably grouped as diptychs, triptychs, quadriptychs allowing a statement to expand or find contradiction that enhances the power of a single painting in the group; confining the color palette to black and white oil on canvas paintings subtracts the tendency of attendant color or props to draw focus from the power of the figure statement. Some may find this box approach a gimmick, but consider the 170 paintings within the covers of this book and the distinction of importance of this idea succeeds.Gibbons uses live model sessions, photographs from those sessions, and sketches to compete each of these paintings. His models, while both female and male, tend to emphasize the male figure, as though Gibbons is seeking a way in which to recover the once important status of the male figure in ancient art and in subsequent periods when the male nude was relegated to the shadows of art. His technique of building his palette with 9 shades of gray seems to be more successful on the muscle mass of the male figure.Each of the paintings in this Box Series relates to either an ancient god/goddess, or a theme or idea (dream, solitude, reflection etc). The paintings are palpably real in their execution of the human form and often, as in 'Mechanism', the model holds props such as giant wrenches, cog wheels which tend to emphasize the contrast between the surface of metal or clay and the surface of skin and muscle. In this book the artist pairs most of the paintings with a written explanation and these commentaries seem unnecessary, so powerful are the statements made by the paintings themselves.For this viewer the paintings that concentrate on the figure alone are superior to those that introduce elements of 'story' or symbols. For instance 'Just Breathe' and 'Downward Glance' are more visually powerful than 'Wisdom' or 'Guitar Serenade' and other paintings that depend on props to 'aid' the viewer. Gibbons is now clearly recognized as an important figurative artist of the time and we can only expect more intensive exploration of the joy of once again viewing the human figure from the stance of such a committed artist. Grady Harp, May 09