Balcomb Greene, "Angelina," 1984, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 1/4 inches

Lisa N. Peters

On June 11, the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina, opened an exhibition entitled Balcomb Greene: The Elements, consisting of ten works lent by Spanierman Gallery. The works on view are in the unique figurative style informed by principles of abstraction and photography that Greene developed beginning in the 1950s. Before becoming an artist, Greene completed a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, wrote three novels, and took part in a master’s program in English literature at Columbia University, which led to a job teaching English at Dartmouth College. As an artist, he was an iconoclastic figure with an intellectual frame of mind. His passion for exploring the connection between the physical and spiritual materialized in these late works, in which forms are recognizable yet dislocated in space and intercepted by variegated passages of light and shadow, conveying a sense of becoming and being at once. His Angelina seems to look into his subject’s soul, while in Island and Summer Clouds, sky, rocks, and water are infused with a light that can only be described as supernatural. Continue reading →