ABBIE WINSON lived life as a persistent scholar, an innovative painter, a woman
of enormous wit and charm, a femme fatale and truly one of the great original
thinkers of her time. Her paintings are powerful, evocative statements. They
are highly rhythmic and forceful, suggesting figures and objects in passionate
dynamic relationship.
Abbie was born in 1926 in Pittsburgh, moving to Philadelphia, then to the Washington
Heights neighborhood of New York City. Her vast and varied early education
included Music and Art High, the Arts Students League, Queens College, Le Grand
Chaumier, and then the Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied medicine, shifting
her interests to anatomy and medical illustration. She spoke fluent and nuanced
French.
Abbie studied painting with Hans Hofmann, Vaclav Vytlacil, Morris Kantor, Don
Stacy, and Leon de Leeuw, in New York and was greatly influenced by the modernists
and abstract expressionists, but developed her own dynamic and calligraphic
style. Always a progenitor in her intellectual, artistic, and personal pursuits,
Abbie did mixed-media paintings before the term was coined. She learned typesetting
from Sy Winson, another pioneer in a new field with whom she had three children
and eventually married. She then got a pair of master's degrees, one in Fine
Arts, the other in an emerging category, Special Education.
She taught Art, Science, Math, and learning-disabled children. She became involved
with computer graphics in its infancy, working on early model mainframe computers
with systems so complex that Abbie became the traveling worldwide user guide.
She left the field declaring, "Come to think of it, I don't really like figures
revolving in space."
Primarily, Abbie loved to paint and returned often to large acrylic canvases
and watercolors and ink with collage. She exhibited in group and solo shows
in New York City with much acclaim. Moving towards collaboration, she worked
with NY art and fashion director, Dwayne Resnick, and explored the synergy
of bold, agitating movement of clothing and visual art, the results of which
were displayed in several stories of windows on Madison Avenue.
In her 70's, she took up Chinese calligraphy and the Mandarin language. She
traveled to Beijing and collaborated with local painters in ink on paper, as
well as fleetingly in soapy water with a long brush on pavement. In her 80's,
she frequently travelled to the Midi-Pyrénées
region of France to paint with her friend and former painting student, Petra
Tamboer, in a stone barn in Touffailles, developing a modern artist's retreat.
She worked with her daughter Suzi, son Robert and family art instigator, Brad
Miskell, on cover and interior art for modern poetry books, and worked alongside
daughter Julie on a soft sculpture on wheels installation of art and monsters
(also with Petra) in her beloved Touffailles.
Her most recent work was part of Circus Warehouse's Aerial Text Experiments
2011,combining text and aerial art for the beginnings of a world-wide poetry
movement 100,000 Poets for Change, developed by editor/publisher/social activist
/Big Bridge editor, Michael Rothenberg. She projected her black and white paintings
over dancers and acrobats (in sync with what is now The Hybrid Movement Co.
of NY) of the Nouveau Cirque movement.
RARIFIED AIR, a retrospective of 70 years of Abbie's work, showed at Art and
Circuses Gallery which was formed in her honor from June 9, 2013 to June 9,
2014.
Abbie in Touffailles
Abbie looking at paint and paper
Abbie Travelling
From Her Art World Collaborators
PETRA TAMBOER
La Grange
Toufailles, France
I remember she talked about [monotypes] and doing this with Andrew [Franck],
you better ask him. That was before we met (August/December 1993) I remember
she would do some monoprint life drawings directly on metal in [Leon] De Leeuw's
class....
Abbie came around 1999 at [La Grange], working on big heavy paper (43 x 36)
. She would mix pastels, watercolour, ink, oilstick and gouaches, using 'impossible'
combinations sometimes,... the gouaches would [fall off once] dried on the
pastels or oilsticks, she would look at it with astonishment, interested in
the underlaying skin and would paste silkpaper on other parts. We very often
had laughs working together, when I would scream "stop Abbie it's enough! ",
being in a more 'less is more' idea. Abbie, always full of energy, just looked
up said 'mmmh' and went on....
From that time she came almost every year and sometimes twice.
During the years the paper became smaller (29x22 then 20x14) but gestures still
large, coming out of the paper, with less different material but still full
of colour, I assisted her putting them together in bigger compositions, that
was playtime, we always seemed to agree
Mai 2011 the last time she came with Julie [Abbie's daughter] , she worked
in black and white, small paper, beautiful light.. energy.... almost [ ethereal
]...
I miss her.
ANDREW FRANK
Woodstock, NY
I remember most of the monotypes shown since they're from the time Abbie and
I would meet at Montclair College and work /play on the printing press.
This happened over the course of months. Abbie knew when the printing room
would be free from classes and student use: usually about 9:30 am till noon,
sometime midweek. I drove from the city, got coffee for us, whereupon we'd
talk about color tones through weather, transparency, synesthesia, Bonnard,
Hans Hoffmann, Delmore Schwartz, bad art, etc... Basically we'd alternate doing
our work, often in silence, simply looking at what was trying to emerge.
Here and there a word would be uttered, or a lewd remark. Or a rhapsody on
space would surface as we worked side by side; Abbie would broadly brush oils
onto the zincs plates we had carefully burnished and prepared beforehand; in
a few gestures, she'd stop, mull, continue and violà I'd help line up
the plate, paper, felt, etc. before pressing... afterwords placing the sheet
on a drying tray. Next it'd be my turn for the press.
Since my interest was toward an experience of negative pressure shown through
pressure, I directly emulsified oil and water on paper before printing. Not
really having had any formal art training, my host of "mistakes" delighted
her. We'd inspect and deliberate about the work, doing as many as four or more
pieces at a time, then leave it all to dry till the following week. In short,
we had a blast.
A few years ago I attempted to set Abbie up to do some monotypes here in Woodstock
(a local artist with a great press offered) but unfortunately health and logistics
had their stubborn way. We often squeezed hands or held back a tear, saying
Robert [Abbie's late son, Andrew's close friend] would be delighted with our
antics.
LINKS
Art + Circuses Gallery
http://artandcircuses.com
To purchase Abbie's work suzi@circuswarehouse.com
to know more about Aerial Text Experiments:
http://circuswarehouse.com/2014/08/aerial-text-experiments/
Petra Tamboer http://petratamboer.com/index.php/en/
Andrew Franck http://www.andrewfranck.net/Home.html