A Conversation with Stephen Beal and George Lawson
New Museum Los Gatos, 106 E Main St, Los Gatos CA
Thursday | November 12, 2015 | 7:00 pm
FREE with admission; FREE for members
In conjunction with the exhibit Stephen Beal: Warp and Weft Selected Grid Paintings 2005—2015 please join us in a lively conversation with exhibiting artist Stephen Beal and guest curator and gallerist, George Lawson.
Stephen Beal was Provost at California College of the Arts from 1997 to 2008. In May 2008, he was appointed president of CCA. In this position he has played a significant role in the expansion of the college's programs and facilities and the implementation of key academic initiatives, all of which contributed to an overall enrollment increase of more than 50 percent since Beal arrived at the college. Beal attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, and earned his M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been exhibited in the Bay Area and throughout the Midwest.
Beal paints with oil, acrylic and gouache on linen canvases and wooden panels in monochromes or closely toned hues. His paint marks are organized within a penciled grid structure, recalling the grid's well established history in modernism, from Mondrian to Agnes Martin. The power of Beal’s paintings to generate fresh imagery belies both the intimacy of their scale and the established tradition from which they are spawned.
Guest curator George Lawson is the principal of George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco. George was a painter for many years before starting the gallery. He has exhibited his own work in The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Oakland Museum, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, The Bielefeld Kunstahall in Germany and the Malmo Kunsthall in Sweden.
George Lawson Gallery's program showcases trends in contemporary painting, as well as photography with conceptual links to painting. The gallery exhibits an international roster of artists, and produces limited edition books for many of their exhibitions. The gallery opened in San Francisco at 49 Geary in 2008, originally as room for painting room for paper. From 2011 to 2013 GLG maintained an exhibition space at 8564 Washington Boulevard in Culver City along with a satellite space at 780 Sutter in San Francisco before consolidating at the present location in at 315 Potrero Avenue in San Francisco.
