Jack Reilly - Painting

JACK REILLY is known for his complex paintings on geometric shaped canvas structures. As one of the foremost American painters working with shaped canvas, for the past three decades Reilly has maintained his affinity for purity and simplicity in painting, albeit shrouded in complex visual systems and laborious technique. Reilly's work is exhibited in galleries and museums and is included in numerous public and private collections internationally. Major public art commissions include a forty-foot painting, executed in enamel on steel, for San Diego County, and an eighteen foot shaped-canvas painting, commissioned by American Airlines for Los Angeles International Airport. In addition to his longstanding career as an artist, Reilly is currently the Art Department Chair at California State University Channel Islands.

"Fresh, postmodernist whole is the name of the game," Josef Woodard: LOS ANGELES TIMES. "Quintessentially Post Modern," Nancy Ann Jones: ARTWEEK. "Completely Outrageous," Marlena Donahue: LOS ANGELES TIMES. "An innovative use of mixed-media materials is combined with a sense of Baroque restlessness," Edward Lucie-Smith: AMERICAN ART NOW.

Current Paintings: Densly-polychromed and textured brushstrokes are organized in linear formats around mathematical and intuitive systems on shaped-canvas structures. Two-dimensional surfaces take on ambiguous characteristics of three-dimensionality as geometric canvases straddle the line between painting and sculpture.

1990s Abstraction: Lyrical abstraction combines complex shaped-canvas structures and illusionary pictorial space. A period of major public art commissions.

Late 1980s Dimensional Abstraction: Mutiple layers of physically suspended shaped canvases. Lyrical abstraction combines geometric planes with organic bands of textured polychromatic color.

Mid 1980s Abstraction: Complex shaped canvas structures investigate illusionary depth and pictorial space within geometric abstract formats.

Early 1980s Abstraction: Shaped canvases: development of minimalist shaped structures combined with linear elements of hard edge color.

Late 1970s Abstract Works: Early abstract paintings combine illusionary space with color field and hard edge painting. A synthesis of abstraction merged with illusionary pictorial depth.

MIXED MEDIA

Mixed Media Early and late 1990s: An eclectic mix of abstraction and classical painting, integrated with rich textures, bas relief, mosaics and guilded surfaces on shaped canvas structures.