text: Willy Richardson: Lolland and Other Places
  June 13 - July 19, 2008
  Gallery Sakiko New York is pleased to present "Lolland and Other Places" an exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper by Santa Fe based painter Willy Richardson.
  Over the past decade, Richardson has developed a unique abstract painting style, which employs vertical color banners as defining compositional form. These banners are layered into complex, almost veil-like patterns that capture specific emotional stages and allude to distinct atmospheres. While sparked by outside impressions and reflective of the artist's immediate response to his environment, Richardson's work is internal. Though the results are shared with the public, the preceding dialogue between the artist and his subject is private. As each composition thrives on the dominant characteristics of its palette and the density of the brushstrokes, the underlying mood shifts accordingly. In this exhibition, Richardson for the first time presents a series of watercolors, which was conceived on the island of Lolland, located in Southern Denmark. In these works, Richardson's continues his exploration of color and light, but finds a new form of translucence that was inspired by Lolland's exceptional characteristics during the summer solstice. In his notes on the particular light that can be found on that island, Richardson remarked:
  "The stillness of Lolland, perhaps the flattest place on earth, seeps into my bones. The light has a special quality here. The golden hour lasts about 4 hours.... what would normally be a scramble to paint during the finest hour, is stretched out luxuriously - and I can take my time. Then the sun pours down on wheat fields for hours in a sunset. One hour after the sun finally sets, it is already beginning to rise again (about 2am). There are no days and nights here - only long stretches of different colored light."
  Willy Richardson was born in 1974 in Santa Fe, NM. Since receiving his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute, New York, in 2000, he has had numerous gallery exhibitions. His works are in private and public collections in major cities in the US as well as Germany, Denmark, Australia and Hungary. This exhibition coincides with the release of a monograph on Willy Richardson's work. The catalogue entitled "Lolland and Other Places" can be purchased through the gallery.