Opening Reception: Friday, May 12 from 5 to 7pm
Showcasing a side of 97-year-old artist Roland Petersen that few collectors know, Studio Shop Gallery presents the exhibition “Roland Petersen: Spotlight on the Seventies” from May 12 through June 3. The exhibition includes many never-before-shown pieces from the prolific Bay Area master’s works from the 1970's. An immersive opening reception Friday, May 12 from 5 to 7 pm will include a talk by gallery owner Janet Martin and a scene painted in Petersen’s signature style which will allow attendees to “enter” a Roland Petersen painting.
“For those who only know of his oil-based landscape Picnic Series, seeing Roland’s acrylic Satellite paintings with their hard-edged and exuberant color field and perspective of the artist floating in the air promises to be a ‘wow’ moment.” –
– JANET MARTIN, OWNER STUDIO SHOP GALLERY
Petersen has enjoyed a long and esteemed career, both as a prolific artist and as an art professor in the renowned UC Davis art department. He continues to paint daily in his studio in Pacifica, California. After receiving his MFA from UC Berkeley in 1950, Petersen studied with Hans Hofmann, a pivotal figure in Abstract Expressionism. Petersen is known for his synthesis of gestural abstract expressionism, painterly realism, and advanced color theory. His paintings are included in the permanent collections of the New York MOMA, the San Francisco MOMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Petersen explained his work to the Smithsonian Institution with these words.
“I deal with color relationships, which I try to think of as a sequence of colors that have a kind of rhythm going, as in music. And I try to deal with changing that rhythm upside down, inside out and in any way that I can vary that. The kind of feeling that I am trying to achieve in my work is pretty much a kind of isolation of a person being alone in his own thoughts.”
– ROLAND PETERSEN, ARTIST
The Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara had a retrospective show of his work that ran through April 23. Petersen’s extensive collection available from Studio Shop Gallery includes work from 1950 through the present day.
