Studio Sunday: Don Voisine
Don Voisine is an American contemporary painter who currently lives and works in Williamsburg, New York. The artist specializes in geometric oil paintings where heavy, monochromatic black polygons are broken up by moments, like pixels and frames, of white or bright colored paint.
This panoramic image of Voisine’s studio is quite interesting – it shows us far more of the studio space than we might normally get to see, really laying everything bare. Voisine’s studio looks a little cluttered, but also very industrious. There’s not much in the way of decoration or aesthetics at play in the design of the room, instead it’s very pragmatic, though the paintings seem to be stacked absolutely everywhere with little rhyme or reason. One can only guess at the organizational system that Voisine chooses to use, or not use.
The image below showcases this a little more, with paintings laid face-up on the floor (perhaps to dry) surrounded by more paintings or, at least, boards, stacked against the walls. The desk and chair in the panoramic photo seem to suggest the Vosine often works on a flat surface, rather than propping his paintings up on an easel. The method certainly lends itself to these clean shapes and straight lines. I can imagine the artist creating his smooth geometric forms with intense focus, bent over a desk or a table, carefully drawing.
Voisin himself has stated that his paintings are partly inspired by Ad Reinhardt and the early practice of Frank Stella. Of course, these works also remind me of Barnett Newman, and Ian Wallace’s monochromes.
