Untitled (Paths, crossing—blue)

Living and working in the Hudson Valley, Cy Gavin creates monumental paintings that echo the scale and setting of those by his nineteenth-century artistic forebears who were inspired by the same landscapes. The vibrancy of his palette, the looseness of his strokes, and the expansiveness of his compositions occasionally invite associations with specific places, but often transport the viewer even further afield, sometimes to more allusive realms. In his hands, nature becomes a conduit to consider a deeper sense of place and connections across time through forms that may resemble foliage, streams, forests, fields, seas, and skies or alternately melt into pure abstraction. His canvases are knowing, subtle meditations on memories and legacies—even his preferred choice of blue pigment is informed by his interest in cultural and scientific history, from the impact of indigo plantations in the American South to his fascination with the optical effects of twilight in a phenomenon known as the Purkinje Shift, when the eye’s sensitivity to the blue end of the color spectrum shifts under low levels of illumination. Blues are preponderant in the nocturnal Untitled (Paths, crossing—blue) where a liminal space emerges, as a thickly painted arced starry sky hangs heavily above the titular paths crossing in the foreground, evoking a sense of multiple possibilities.