Stephen Pace: Nudes & Birds

Altman Siegel is delighted to present Stephen Pace’s second exhibition with the gallery. Nudes & Birds focuses on two subjects that enraptured and inspired Pace throughout his long career. Pace immediately took a shine to drawing as a teenager when his mother dropped him off at a local art class in Indiana where a nude model was posing for students. Pace cheekily recalled noting: this was for him. His passion for these subjects is evident in the sensuousness and ease of which he conjures these forms. Refreshingly jocular, Pace’s confident brushwork and inventive palette communicates the pleasure he gleaned from making this work as much as the narrative elements in the compositions do. 

This selection, spanning three decades from roughly 1960 - 1990, showcases the artist’s sustained fascination with and development of the female figure, and avian forms. At times just reduced to simple shapes, these pictures convey a sense of unhurried jubilee rarely found in Contemporary painting. While these languishing, sun swept, bodies melt in varying states of repose, birds are depicted in constant movement. In Cherry Pickers #2 (1966), a particularly lively canvas, a cackle of black ravens contrast dramatically against a perfect cerulean sky, each with the red dot of a cherry between their beaks. Presumably a boon for any peckish creature in the heat of the mid-afternoon sun, their airborne bodies happily attack the jewel-like fruit. An abundance of cherries is visible in the fields down below, signifying the fecundity of the land. An almost identical version of this painting, Cherry Pickers #1, famously hung above Pace's bed in New York City.