ESSAY FOR EXHIBITION AT THE 

ADELINDA ALLEGRETTI STUDIO GALLERY

To trace the complex development of Gregg Simpson's artistic research, it is necessary to look at not only Canadian but European events in the history of art over the last fifty years. For the visitor who approaches his works for the first time, it would be difficult to believe that the roots of his painting date back to the Pop Art of the 1960s, although identifiable in the chromatic sense of some works.

 But it is precisely the constant attention to experimentation that led Gregg to confront himself in the following decade with Neo-Surrealism and, in the 1980s, with abstraction of an organic nature, from which he never separated. It is from here, therefore, that our analysis begins.

 But before that, I think it's essential to know where Gregg was born and raised because the rainforest of the Canadian west coast has indelibly marked his artistic identity. Perhaps for those who live in a metropolis it is difficult to fully understand the everyday life spent in symbiosis with nature. 

I'm not talking about the wild and uncontaminated nature in which man himself is a disturbing element, but certainly the Bowen Island, where Gregg lives and works, is very far from smog, subway and rivers of cars in line. Without this preamble it would be very difficult to fully enter his painting because we would not be able to grasp the starting point inherent in this type of abstraction. 

Works like Crystal Currents (2014), Dream Dancers (2014), Floral Still Life (2016), Horned Dilemma (2017), Landscape Ritual (2016) and The Group (2014) are the result, on one hand, of constant immersion in nature and on the other, through a subsequent mental process, its geometrization and exemplification. 

This creative process is not conceptually so far from that of First Nations art, in which rivers, stones, flowers and trees, Gregg's favorite subjects, are deconstructed, simplified so much so that a single detail, formal or chromatic, manages to express their complexity and the essence. But what is the purpose of all this? That of freeing the forms, of releasing the vital energy inherent in them, of grasping, like First Nations artists, the spirituality and harmony of that land. 

Speaking of harmony: his works are crossed by a rhythm, also free and which does not follow a pentagram scheme, which the forms seem to subtend, even sometimes apparently massive ones which yet become so ethereal, almost dancing.

Dream Dancers, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 40", 2014

 I think this is explained by the fact that Gregg is also a good drummer and musician, so much so that, I am convinced, the best way to enjoy his paintings is to immerse them in his music. In Gregg's artistic work there is no clear distinction between painting and music, on the contrary one implements the other, in a constant search for harmony and primary meaning that allow us to glimpse the profound essence of life deprived of its tinsel beauty.

 

Byzantium-3

gouache and pastel, 16.5" x 11.7", 2015

Also on display is a series of gouaches and pastels on paper made in 2015 between Murano and Ravenna. In addition to remembering Gregg's love for Italy, which has hosted and inspired him many times, I believe they testify, with their particularly flickering and gestural brushstrokes embroidered in the air, precisely the undeniable union between music and painting, in this case made even more complicit by the brilliance of the glass and the reflections of the water on one side, and by the gold of the mosaics on the other. 

I feel I can say that Gregg’s show is probably not, and does not want to be, an exhibition for everyone, but it will certainly charm those who do not like to stop at the first glance, and who instead wish to look a little deeper into the depth of things.

Adelinda Allegretti, Gualdo Tadino, 2018