CLICK HERE FOR A WAYNE MAGRIN EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

A LETTER FROM WAYNE MAGRIN, SYDNEY AUSTRALIA, AUGUST 14, 2021

Arrival - On a High Tide

I close my eyes and dare to dream. Endless blue sky above. No limitation on where I can go. I unclip the sail cover, lay out the sheets, hoist the sail. Winter sun warm on the back of my neck. I release the mooring. A sudden gust fills Rosie's sails. It propels us past Barrenjoey Headland. I am free. Free to let my thoughts take me to another place..

I sail for days. The days turn into weeks. The weeks to months. My life is a series of sun rises and sunsets, peaceful seas and fresh salty air.

Now I am becalmed. A sunfish swims alongside Rosie. It's dorsal fin a sculling rudder; splitting the smooth surface. I sense he is curious as to my purpose out there on the wide blue ocean. I tell him of my voyage, and of my ultimate destination. As I describe my paintings to him, I feel an inner joy seep through my body. Combined with the warm sun on my back, the effect is almost transcendental.
The sunfish is a good listener. Hours pass. Our time together is measured only by the lapping of the water on Rosie's hull. I enquire about his life, and his journey. He tells me tales of sweet jellyfish, of deadly fishing nets and of his solitary life swimming the warm oceans. He laments his lonely existence. We part, both of us the richer for the connection we have formed.

Perfect golden sunset after perfect golden sunset accompany my not so perfect harmonica playing. But who is judge and jury out here in the wide blue? I can be as wild and free as I like.

The predawn light glimmers on the horizon. There! A flash of light. Port side. Low on the horizon. Hand on the tiller, holding steady, I count. One flash. Five seconds. Another flash. The pattern is unmistakable. I check my bearings. I have arrived! Montauk Point Light. The white flash continues into the gradually brightening sky. It is if it is saying: “Welcome ol' mate! We have been waiting for you!” My eyes fill with tears. Happy tears. Tears of joy. I have made it.

I look down at my orange wet weather gear. A bit worse for wear after the long voyage. Quick change. Dry clothes. Yes that's better. Hail a cab. “Where ya headin'?”
“The Arts Centre at Duck Creek” I reply proudly. “I am having a show there.”

******************
Sadly, I can't be at Duck Creek for the show due to the turmoil of Covid-19.

But in my mind, I'm there. Wayne Magrin – His Brother from Another Mother - floats into the cavernous space that is The Little Barn.
Smiling, I hug Chuck Manion and congratulate him on his brilliant show. In his irregular shaped driftwood and fascinating flotsam, I see familiar objects. Objects that I long to touch and examine, their texture already ingrained on my hands.

I eagerly accept the baton from the Cerulean Blue Devil himself – and inhale the salt air that envelopes and entwines our art. And our love of the ocean and found items.

***************************************************************************************************************

Wayne Magrin’s large scale representations of seafaring culture are painted in a style that combines the drama and energy of Marsden Hartley’s seascapes, with the flattened depth of field and minimal compositions employed by Milton Avery, and the emotional impact of Australian painter Sidney Nolan.

“What is it about seascapes that pulls people in?

When I was a child I used to draw boats over and over. Wayne’s paintings brought back the kid looking through a telescope searching for boats down by the water. The idea of it, trying to comprehend the sea with an accumulation of marks, light bouncing around, figuring out the shadows, the physical quality of the paintings painted on wood, like a sign painter, filling in the space of the memory and the desire to be part of the water. To be in it.

I don’t understand it but I am drawn in.

It is something like falling out of a tree when we are dreaming. They say it comes from our ancestors who used to live in trees.”

- Charles Manion

St. Chuck the Apostate

Going against the grain might just be the natural stride and timing of that, of what is unique. Who knows what forms us and where the forms we make derive and in what form, they will appear?

Touch is like voice, some have it. It is inexplicable. It is a gift. In Chuck Manion’s work idiosyncrasy is poetry, painted objects, touched with divinity and purity, as if such a thing could exist.

My friend Hal Willner, the great music producer, once remarked “You can tell a musician, when they touch an instrument”. There is no replacement for touch, as there is no replacement for voice or talent. Uniqueness is a rare bird. How to use the same element and materials as others, and what about them sings of uniqueness? Is it personality, depth of character, exhaustion all applied to that inanimate object, which is in fact a living thing?

- Julian Schnabel

CLICK HERE FOR A CHARLES MANION EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

CHARLES MANION: Cerulean Blue and the Devil
, July 24 - August 15, 2021

WAYNE MAGRIN: His Brother from Another Mother, August 21 - September 12, 2021

A Two-Part Exhibition Organized in Collaboration with Julian Schnabel

Moby Dick opens: ''Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodologically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball... I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.''    - Herman Melville

“Though oceans separate these two painters, the sense of longing comfort and solitude that the sea affords hovers like existential salt air, billowing from the personal character gesture and love of making that comes from the unknowable and the definite that we find in the sea and in painting. The regenerating anti gravity machine called painting and or the sea has drawn Charlie and Wayne to its banks from its different poles  And the forms that they have derived from both perspectives have radically different appearances. Yet the resonance of humidity and fog and white water are indelibly evidenced in ways that only those who know the sea would do.

Charlie

Painted objects constructed as need be out of materials that have been borne to protect from the weather to steer the boat to send a signal the arm of the utilitarian poet building a language out of leftovers and inventive applications of unique intention and irreal preoccupations!  

Wayne 

On the other side of the North Pacific looking out to the port of palm beach Australia from the dock through weather and wind Wayne has tried to paint every version and shape of spray and white water in the frothy thick of it and in the distance too painted on the wood of the sign painter a durable and sturdy surface that receives the physical nature of Wayne’s free and succinct hand The translation of what is seen and what it becomes is pure painting, direct  the original sin. 

There you have it! What more be said says I matey! Coming to Duck Creek soon!”

- Julian Schnabel, May 11, 2021

Part 1: Charles Manion Cerulean Blue and the Devil, July 24 through August 15

The first of this two-part exhibition will feature works by Montauk-based artist Charles Manion, consisting of a variety of works which straddle the line between painterly sculpture and constructed paintings. Manion is as comfortable hanging his paintings in the trees as he is in a white cube. A dynamic and unconventional presentation of these works suit the nature and spirit of the rough hewn walls of the John Little Barn, but also speaks to the innovative spirit of the abstract expressionist artists who exploited the often limited local resources available to them.

Charles Manion was studying painting at the School of Visual Arts in the 1980’s, at a time when digital and video art declared painting dead in the New York art scene. As the young artist found his medium of choice was determined to be obsolete, he knew a good stretch of isolation and Sisyphean heavy lifting was ahead. Manion decided to leave art school, unwilling to “carry the flag” as he put it. Manion would continue to make objects for the next 25 years with a freedom that is unencumbered by formal tradition or academic expectations.

Manion collects objects, many of them discarded by a careless culture. Inspired repurposing is perhaps the first stage of his artistic intuition, and it carries weight throughout his work. He asks you to consider “how a farmer would make a painting” and answers that question with wood pallets, mosquito net, discarded tarps and driftwood. He follows the resourcefulness of a fisherman who will use what he has in the yard to suit his utilitarian needs, or in Manion’s case, to build a more dynamic composition.

There is an inside/out element to much of Manion’s work, which is not surprising due to his reverence for materials. A series of almost minimalist works are composed by cutting swaths of stretched canvas from a painting, revealing its armature. They could be a manifestation of Italian artist Lucio Fontana’s Buchi (hole) paintings, or perhaps a nod to Gordon Matta Clark’s transformative “building cuts.” A series of shaped canvases take their form from fragments of sail cloth, circus tents, and other found textiles. His stretchers are built or carved to accommodate the paintings form, but the final work leaves only stitched seams and weathered surfaces to describe the material’s past life.

Manion isn’t precious about his work. The physical characteristics of his material are as meaningful as their final form. Manion’s works are about freedom from convention, but their irregularities are less an act of rebellion as they are a celebration of being human.

Part 1: Charles Manion Cerulean Blue and the Devil will be open from July 24 through August 15.

Part 2: Wayne Magrin, His Brother from Another Mother will open August 21, and be on view through September 12, 2021.