| Three boys, side by side, all look contemplative as if they are wondering where to go, what to do; as if they’re not sure of their own existence, as if they don’t know why they are here. They are standing against relatively dark backgrounds, their faces—though those of children—carry an expression that is so immersed in anxiety that the trace of innocence is almost invisible. They are three oil paintings of French artist Jean-Pierre Brustier. | 
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Catherine Yu-Shan Hsieh on Jean-Pierre Brustier and others
Three boys, side by side, all look contemplative as if they are wondering where to go, what to do; as if they’re not sure of their own existence, as if they don’t know why they are here. They are standing against relatively dark backgrounds, their faces—though those of children—carry an expression that is so immersed in anxiety that the trace of innocence is almost invisible. They are three oil paintings of French artist Jean-Pierre Brustier.
Brustier, along with six other artists°XAnet Abnous, Nicola Bonessa, Steven Foy, Suvi Konttinen, Kurt Rostek, and Tanya Slingsby°Xrecently showcased their work at Broadway Gallery in New York City. The group show Color with Enthusiasm explored the world of color and colors of the world through these international artists’ works. Coming from Armenia, Finland, France, the UK, and Canada, these artists define color in their own terms using a variety of media on canvas.
While Brustier’s work contains fewer colors compared to his fellow artists in the show, he handles his subject with equal, if not more, poignancy and precision. In The Discovery of the World, a little boy in a white kufi and red and white jersey looks up with his deep, sad eyes, the world seems to stop being a kid’s playground. It becomes a black hole that gobbles up the residue of happiness. In contrast to Brustier’s blueness, Bonessa, another artist from France, boldly pours vibrant colors onto the canvas, forming irregular shapes and forms that carry a message that only the painter can decode. “Creating a unique place woven layer by layer,” Bonessa has said of her own work. “Each mark contains a readjustment of the regard; each point of view joins others in unfolding places. The journey across this ‘landscape’ is apparent in the final image.”
Contrary to Bonessa, whose work is primarily comprised of colors, Armenian artist Abnous tells stories in her paintings, whether it’s a fairy-like Pink Nude dancing in the woods, or the doomed biblical couple Adam & Eve. Being more than a storyteller, Abnous lets out her inner self in The Scream, where orange and blue preside, shadowed by an outburst of anger and frustration erupting from a lady figure of black, orange, and brown.
As Abnous paints full-length figures, Finlander Konttinen zeroes in on the face, especially the eyes, as in Real and Who Me?. She returns to the basic black and white in these two pieces while accentuating Careful Now with hues of red. A moment is freezed in Careful Now where two people—one dark-skinned, the other light-skinned—are about to kiss, with their noses touching, their lips slightly open, the focus of the painting centering on the sensual red lips that almost unite.
British artist Steven Foy paints colorful balloon-like circles and cheese-stick rectagulars in Arrangement #11 and Arrangement #16. “The works are concerned with man-made order and organic growth, and the tension between the construction of the painting, like an industrial process, and the growing of something in nature from seed,” Foy says of his multicolored shapes.
Canadian artist Tanya Slingsby combines a beige backdrop with colors of the sunset in Icaran and experiments the possibilities of oceanic blue in Hydron. While Slingsby deals with colors of the nature, fellow artist Rostek paints under the influence of music and literature. Rostek’s Word series speaks a fluent pictorial language of geometric abstraction. Deeply affected by American beat writers such as Jack Kerouac and Shamatha meditation (a meditation technique practiced by Tibetan Buddhists), Rostek combines what appears to be quotation marks and colons with red and blue, black and grey, orange and yellow, in an effort to tap into the mechanical essence of this language usage. “These paintings are from a series that explores the bluntness of English punctuation with a bop jazz painted environment,” Rostek says.
