Abstract oil on canvas painting by American artist, Jack Massey (b. 1925-2023) entitled “Age of Kings” (orange and black).
79 3/4”T x 60”W x 2”D
🍊 “Poetry is not about what is on the page, but relates to something else. The thing you read on the page gets you there in a sense, bit by bit, pointing toward things not seen in front of you.”
Jack Massey, 2016
🍊” Jack Massey was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He studied at the Albert C. Barnes Foundation (Merion, PA) and the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Massey served in the military during WWII and fought in the Battle of the Bulge—1944-45—in the 3rd army, 346th regiment, near St. Vith, Ardennes Forest, Belgium, under General Patton’s leadership. After serving in the War, he attended art school and graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine arts in Philadelphia—the oldest art school in the country. After graduating, Massey was awarded a Prix de Rome and spent three years at the American Academy in Rome, later returning as an artist-in-residence there. Massey’s experiences abroad have been a consistent source of reference, inspiration and reminiscence throughout his artistic and professional careers.
🍊Reverence for the historical” is “a predominant theme” in Jack Massey’s work. Considering the myriad references to art history, the vast array of techniques Massey employs and explores that mix, borrow, infiltrate, if not blur, the distinctions between art-historical –isms, and, the array of subjects and ideas he explores, along with the artist’s tendency to meld traditionally flat methods of art with architectural possibilities, Massey’s work is easier to reminisce with the history of Modern Art on the whole then it is to pin his work down to any single style of art making. Massey does not however copy artistic genera, but rather, he allows artistic possibility to arise in the work as it is being made, similarly to how jazz musicians allow musical rifts from other musicians and eras to wander in and out of a performance. “
-Todd Bartel,Gallery Director, Curator
Thompson Gallery
(https://www.csw.org)