Over the course of his career, Larry Poons’s practice has centered on pigment, surface, and perceptual effect. After visiting an exhibition by color theorist and abstract expressionist Barnett Newman in New York, Poons left his music studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston to pursue painting. His initial work in the 1960s featured optical arrangements of floating dots and ellipses set against monochromatic backgrounds. Poons later shifted toward what he described as “tactile pigment,” returning the focus to the material properties of paint itself. As he succinctly put it, “A failed painting is better than one that’s just plain bad. The failed painting is one that could have been great.”
Image Courtesy of Bernard Jacobson Gallery
Website
https://larrypoons.com
