Mary Iverson

An obsession with ports and freight containers might not seem obvious or fertile subject matter for an artist, but Seattle-based Mary Iverson has explored just this world in various different ways over the past decade.

Her early paintings were fairly straightforward (if naïve) representations of the banks of containers stacked in situ at the Port of Seattle. As she became increasingly fascinated with the geometry of these infinite rectangular boxes, her work became more abstract and interesting, and the port itself no longer featured. Painting the planes and the vanishing points, and removing the containers from any real physical context, the paintings became like Cubist kaleidoscopes or three-dimensional linear colour studies. In fact, viewed out of context, the viewer would be hard pushed to ground some of the 2008 paintings in any kind of reality.

Lately though, Iverson has brought the ubiquitous containers back into a recognisable environment, this time drawing and painting them over idealised images of idyllic, untouched landscapes. These have a similar feel about them to some of Christo & Jeanne-Claude's preparatory drawings for their ambitious 'wraps', but ask some serious questions about the few untouched places left today. One of her most powerful recent paintings reworks Albert Bierstadt’s 1870 oil painting ‘Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast’ with the containers washed up on the pristine shores – an environmentally conscious update of an iconic American painting, raising questions about whether anywhere is safe from industrialisation and containerization.

Grey Containers, 2006

Sunk, 2007

M22, Arc, 2007

Harbour, 2007

Waterway, 2008

Waterway #2, 2008

Column #3, 2008

Diagonal Column, 2008

Terminal, 2008

Frontier #2, 2009

Puget Sound, Pacific Coast, with Containers, 2009

All images © Mary Iverson

Dru Donovan

Young American photographer Dru Donovan's photographs are ambiguous and sensitive and compelling. Looking at the images, its hard to know whether her work is staged, or more reportage based. She graduated from Yale last year, but information on her or her work is scant, which actually serves to make the images more intriguing and open to interpretation. 

Taking place in a strange suburban limbo, and dealing with issues like body image and the awkwardness of teenage years, Donovan's work shows subjects seemingly uncomfortable in themselves, often awkward in front of the lens. There are shades of Diane Arbus with her uncanny knack of capturing weirdness in mundane situations, but it's Donavan's ability to capture the vulnerability in her subjects in such a thoughtful way that makes her work so powerful. A talent to watch.

All images © Dru Donovan

William Gear

Scottish painter William Gear was something of an unsung original talent in his time; a great shame given how bold, modern and playful his work is. Whilst definitely abstract, the shapes and patterns in his work come from his love of landscape and natural forms.

Born in 1915, Gear studied at the Edinburgh College of Art, and then went on to Paris in the late 1930s where he studied with Fernard Leger, whose complex compositions and bold use of colour had a marked affect on Gear. He was drafted into the military during World War II but managed to continue painting, even exhibiting work in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Cairo and Germany. In 1947 after he was released from service he returned to Paris and worked prolifically, spending time with other emerging abstract artists and become affiliated to the CoBrA art movement, who espoused complete freedom of colour and form in there work (plus a dislike of Surrealism!) Gear’s reputation grew and his work was shown alongside Jackson Pollock’s in New York, but he was never fully appreciated back home. His ‘Autum Landscape’ painting of 1951 was included in the Festival of Britain that year, but the Daily Telegraph described it as “linoleum-design art” and the president of the Royal Academy, Sir Alfred Munnings, described it as a “scheming, self-conscious, anglicised, fifty-year old repetition of the École de Paris”. Not exactly what an artist wants to hear!

The distillation of natural forms, and the complex web-like structures or bold shapes were far more considered and involved than that, and much of his work still looks contemporary today. Gear continued to work well into his 70s – see the fantastic abstracts below from 1988 – and died in 1997.

Autumn Trunks, 1952

Abstract, Red and Green, 1988

October Landscape, 1959

Red Flower, 1951

Winter Hedgerow, 1951

Landscape #2, 1951

Abstract, Yellow & Purple, 1988

Grey Square on Yellow, 1956

White Feature, 1958

Autumn Study, 1953

Pastoral, 1952

Winter Structure, 1956

Black & White Form, 1956

Caged Forms, 1969

All image © Estate of William Gear

Kwakwaka’wakw art

Some work by various members of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation to start the new decade. An indigenous group who live on or near to Vancouver Island, they have a rich history of art and culture, and the images of the sacred creatures – ravens, bears, salmon, eagles, etc – their artists produce seem particularly bold and dynamic within the Native American tradition. The graphic simplicity of this work is really effective, and whilst the Kwakwaka’wakw’s traditions stretch back centuries, these contemporary serigraphs would be at home next to work by people like Charlie Harper, Otl Aicher or Paul Ibou.

William Wasden, 'Bee', circa 2000

Jason Hunt, 'Kwa-guilth Bear', circa 2003

Tom Hunt, 'Kwa-guilth Raven', circa 2004

George Hunt Jr, 'Butterfly', circa 1999

Richard Hunt, 'Kwa-guilth Sea Eagle', circa 2001

Tony Hunt, 'Eel #1', circa 1996

Calvin Hunt, 'Cormorant', circa 2005

Debbie Hunt, 'Kwa-guilth Sun', circa 2005



William Wasden, 'Dragonfly', circa 2000

Richard Hunt, 'Eagle', circa 1998

All work © the artists