Joan Kahn

Joan Kahn Indigo Denim Blue Color Abstract Expressionist Modernist Oil Painting

c.1980's

Oil paint on heavy paper. (this might possibly be acrylic paint) This does not appear to be signed. Joan Kahn (USA 1953-) grew up in New York City; Princeton, New Jersey; and Vermont; in an environment that patronized the arts. At home her father, a professor, and mother, a state economist and homemaker, collected nineteenth and twentieth century drawings and prints, Middle eastern rugs, and ceramics, pewter, and old tools. Her grandfather, Max Westfield, was an academically trained portrait painter and her great uncle was a well-known gallery owner and art dealer in pre-World War II Germany. One of the influential experiences of Joan’s youth was visiting her grandfather in his studio in Tennessee where the family had first immigrated. Growing up near New York, and spending a year in Paris during high school, provided formative visits to museums and galleries. Joan was academically talented in grade and high school, but after her father’s death during her first years at university she found herself concentrating on studio and history of art. It was a subject above others absorbed and concentrated her focus. Influential in Joan’s development and later work are the historic movements of the Bauhaus and Modernist design and architecture, geometric art and design of diverse cultures, Color Field Painting. Many artists have had a impact on her work, such as Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Antoni Tapies, David Smith, John McLaughlin, Tony Smith, Louise Nevelson, Robert Mangold, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Valerie Jaudon, Jasper Johns, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Vija Celmins, Caio Fonseca, Peter Halley, Ed Moses, Juan Usle, and Nancy Haynes...

David Rankin, American (b. 1946) Rocky Hillside, (1990) Oil on paper Hand signed lower right, signed and titled verso. 30 x 22 1/2 inches David Rankin is a New York-based, British-born Australian post-war and contemporary artist known for his expressionistic abstract paintings. His work can be categorized by his use of quick, loose brushstrokes, reminiscent of scribbles on a page. Rankin works predominantly in oil painting and acrylic on canvas, but also works with paper, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities across the world, including New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Mexico, Vienna, Berlin and Cologne, as well as all over Australia. Represented in many of the world’s leading public and private collections and museums, David Rankin’s work is featured in Australia’s leading institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery. David Rankin was born in Plymouth, Devon, England in 1946 then emigrated to Australia with his family in 1948. He spent his childhood in the 1950s in the semi-rural Port Hacking region South of Sydney and his teenage years in country New South Wales, from Hay, Wagga Wagga and Albury in the South to Bourke and Brewarrina in the North. Rankin is self-taught, developing his techniques and ideas in the outback towns of his youth. He was inspired by the greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Klee as well as being influenced by the history of Buddhism and Asian art. In his travels before he arrived in Sydney in 1967 he developed a concept of what he wanted to achieve as an Australian artist. His dream was to express the anima, the life spirit or the essence of God in all nature. As an Australian artist he believed could bring the elements of Western Art together with an understanding and love for the cultures of Asia and the Australian Aborigine. He also felt that as Australia was closer to Asia than Europe it made sense to think about the art of Indian, Chinese and Japanese artists, and that one could not be an authentic articulate Australian artist without a love and respect for the artistic and spiritual expressions of the various Aboriginal artists, peoples and cultures. His work combined elements of Abstract Expressionist painting with Jewish and Aboriginal influences. In 1979 his first wife, Jennifer Mary Roberts (née Haynes) died. Rankin subsequently met his current wife Lily Brett, whose own life was etched by tragedy with her parents being survivors of the Holocaust. She too migrated to Australia as a child after the Second World War in 1948. The artist recounts that his empathy for Lily and the pity for his first wife's death fused into what he calls "the dark blessing of my life." The darkness was transformed into images. The author Dore Ashton writes that the events of 1979 and the fire which ravished his studio in 1997 and burnt his art works and many personal possessions, had a profound impact on his work. Having personal life experiences as his subject matter, Rankin's paintings contemplate these things. For example, his Jerusalem series followed a trip to Jerusalem in 1988, which then led to his Golgotha works. His travels to the Australian, American and Mexican deserts became the subject matter for many of his canvases, such as Ridge – Mungo, Golden Prophecy – San Antonio, Grey Sonora Landscape and then led to his Witness Series. From the fire in his studio he then painted Buddha and Flames. He illustrated two books by Lily Brett on the holocaust and explored the theme further in his huge work The Drowned and The Saved from a book by Primo Levi of the same name. Through Brett he encountered Jewish mythology and painted judaica imagery, Black...

Black Elk Oil on Canvas 94 x 74" / 7 ft 10" x 6 ft 2" (Some of these images show his other large scale work in collections around the country) This is one of his signature large oi...

Patricia Spergel’s Punctuate (2025) is a vibrant abstract painting that embodies bold color, gestural brushwork, and expressive composition. In this 36 x 32-inch oil on canvas, satur...