Harold Lash
November 18, 2012 1:13 PM   Subscribe

Harold Lash is an abstract painter whose works are wild and startlingly vivid. There are repeated themes of flowers and cities and ships and are often obsessively patriotic. I particularly enjoy his painting of Rittenhouse in Philadelphia, where he lives and works, and the colors of Girls Night Out strikes me as well. [WARNING: HUGE IMAGES]
posted by Rory Marinich (9 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not really that happy about being asked to download attachments for every image...
posted by jokeefe at 1:18 PM on November 18, 2012


These are incredibly gorgeous. 4th of July is amazing but I think my favorite is 9/11 Saved by Grace.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:19 PM on November 18, 2012


jokeefe: All it does is load the image in the tab. Not sure why the warning comes up.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:21 PM on November 18, 2012


You can link to the categories (example: here) and from there view the images instead.
posted by jokeefe at 1:22 PM on November 18, 2012


shakespeherian-- maybe a browser thing? It doesn't load for me when I use the links in the post at all, just the download message. But there's an easy workaround, at any rate.
posted by jokeefe at 1:23 PM on November 18, 2012


shakespeherian, he had this one 9/11 painting that just astonished me. It was this incredible ethereal blue, and the skeletons of buildings were dancing and bending, as these bright angels arced around the cityscape and floated towards a sun. Down at the bottom was a mess of white flowers. It's hard to describe, but I really regret not being able to share at least a picture of it online.

I also wish I could have linked to more of his paintings of parks and flowers. He has an incredible range of paintings that all captured the sort of lushness of wild places in different colors, but always with this feeling of there being color and diversity as far as the eye could see. That and his enormous painting of the Brooklyn Bridge... god, I want to storm in there with a photographer and document everything in his little place on Chestnut Street. He kept pulling away canvases to show three more beneath the visible ones, and I kept regretting that I couldn't stare at them all for much, much longer.
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2012


I've tried to clean up the links and I'm not getting anywhere, but when I click on the "download here" link it just loads in my browser. Is that not working at all for you, jokeefe (or anyone else?)
posted by restless_nomad at 1:29 PM on November 18, 2012


I like to look at all sorts of pictures, abstract, expressionist, whatever. But this looks like the throw-away stuff I see in thrift shops. I don't get it.
posted by univac at 1:55 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


But this looks like the throw-away stuff I see in thrift shops.

Yeah, stuff like this looks like the mass produced paintings you'd see in hotels in the 1970s. That painting in particular is distinctive of mass produced "sofa sized art" style. A painter friend of mine told me about how he used to make these mass produced paintings. The painting was set up so you could put it on in quick layers. Like this painting, first you cover the canvas with thick red paint, then you use a palette knife to smear in some yellow, Brush on some brown for the ships, which works OK as a midground since you're going to drag up some of the wet red and yellow, which will merely mix into the muddy brown. Then use some thick white on a palette knife to smear on the sails. Then a little black fine point brush for the ropey details.

Now do those layers on a dozen canvases at a time. First all the reds times 12, the yellow x 12, brown x 12, white x 12, and black x 12. Now you have a dozen copies of original, handmade crap.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:25 PM on November 18, 2012


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