092 http://www.AmericanArtCollector.com
UPCOMING SHOW PREVIEW / NEW YORK, NY
December 4, 2016-January 7, 2017George Billis Gallery
525 W. 26th Street, Ground Floor | New York, NY 10001
(212) 645-2621 | http://www.georgebillis.comTOM GREGGStories to tell
O
rhan Pamuk, the Turkish winner of
the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature,
wrote, “If objects are not uprooted from
their environs and their streets, but are
situated with care and ingenuity in their
natural homes, they will already portray
their own stories.”
The objects in Tom Gregg’s paintings
are themselves, grown to be eaten,
manufactured to be used. “It is the
existence that they possess of their own,
their own life in the universe of objects
and the world itself, that is...mysterious and
beguiling,” he writes. “This respect for and
connection to objects and their perceived
world underlies my pursuits as a still life
painter. At the same time, the things in
the paintings are there primarily to fulfi ll
the demands of the painting itself, much
the way actors are in a play to fulfi ll the
demands of the script. Any symbolic or
metaphoric intention is subservient to the
formal demands presented by the specifi c
needs of each painting.”
Once Gregg selects his objects and
arranges them against colored paper
backgrounds, and once he has arranged
the lighting, the objects establish their
own relationships and begin conversations.1 231
Martini and 8 Ball,
oil on panel, 27½ x 27½"2
Martini and Apples,
oil on panel, 31 x 31"3
Lemons and Water,
oil on panel,
29½ x 29½"4
Limes, Wine, and
Oranges, oil on panel,
36 x 37"