Jazz and Abstraction: Art by Melvin Clark
Melvin Clark is a Pennsylvania-based artist who creates colorful paintings of jazz and abstraction. Influenced in part by the New York jazz scene of the 1980’s, Melvin’s painting focused on a wide range of subject matter but brings a certain musical sensibility to every image.
I’m really enjoying some of the works in Melvin’s abstract gallery in his online portfolio. These works seem to distill the stylistic choices in the rest of Melvin’s practice into pure aesthetics. Each one is arranged in an almost grid-like fashion, with overlapping shapes and bright planes of color interacting in a way that suggests wild movement and bright lights. Curved and straight lines intersect to draw the viewer’s eye across the entirety of the canvas, trying to spot a repeating pattern or reveling in the intuitive nature of the work.
The front page of Melvin's website
Melvin’s entire portfolio circles around a very cohesive color scheme, with bright blue hues intercepted by stripes of warm pinks and browns. The artist is impressively able to switch from a highly stylized, geometric abstract style into a sleek, contoured realism, depicting human figures in surreal, colorful scenes.
