Acrid Sweet Glance Why by Stanley Boxer

Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:
Stanley Boxer, "70th Birthday Exhibition", Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, 1 May-1 June 1996, pages 5 and 6

Lawrence B. Salander, the former New York City art dealer, describes Stanley Boxer’s art practice as a “method of operations” and understanding this “is essential if one is to fully understand his work because the method, the course of his five-decade research, is as much a part of Boxer’s dynamic as the laying on of paint, the drawing of the line, or the carving in stone or wood.”

Furthermore, according to Salander: “For years Boxer’s method demanded working a week, precisely seven days, in a given medium—let’s say painting—which he would in turn pursue for exactly seven days, at which point he would stop painting and begin to draw.”

"Acrid Sweet Glance Why", dating to 1983, exemplifies the artist’s most mature style. During this later period, his abstract compositions primarily consisted of thickly applied layers of paint in an all-over obsessive manner, dusted with shimmery highlights of pearlescent pigment. Here a richly textured work in soft pastel tones emerges from the canvas. Ultimately the American artist focused on the materiality of his medium while drawing inspiration from the natural environment for his subject matter. He then selected bright colours to acknowledge the presence of nature in his work.

Boxer’s works feature in various private and public collections in North America and abroad, including the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia.